LAHORE - Security establishment is considering carrying out special operations to deal with urban terrorism across the country with special focus on Karachi and parts of Balochistan.
Informed sources told The Nation on Sunday that the secret services tasked with fighting terrorism are planning intelligence-led field operations. The traditional operations being carried out by civilian agencies and paramilitary forces are falling short of desired target because of their limited resources and insufficient capabilities in dealing with urban terrorism, they said.
Security contacts are of the assessment that the violence taking place in Karachi and urban centers of Balochistan falls under the categories of high crime of terrorism and needs extraordinary measures.
Sharing details of a neutralising operation in Karachi, they said the interrogation of an urban terrorist revealed that the training he acquired in different spells abroad gave him the expertise of engaging anti-terror forces in the city streets, besides losing the surveillance on him and launching surveillance on his target.
The arrested terrorist has been successfully evading the traditional surveillance tactics of the sleuths on his tail and was finally neutralised by one of the premier secret service in a special operation, they said. It’s just one such example and there are many other well-trained urban terrors who cannot be netted through the existing civilian anti-terror and intelligence sieves.
Interior department contacts while confirming most of the information of this reporter said that terrorists would be hunted down in all corners of the state. In the recent intelligence-led operation, Hafiz Sanaullah alias Qari Zarar, a top leader of outlawed TTP, captured by one of the top secret service from Punjab who was interrogated by that intelligence service and later handed over to the CIA police.
In another operation the same premier intelligence agency captured Tahir Farooqi from RA Bazaar, Lahore, soon after the Cantonment Boards local bodies’ polls. According to sources Commander Tahir Farooqi is head of banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s armed wing that deals with making suicide jackets. The terrorist reportedly were planning to strike a public target during the polling.
Tahir Farooqi went into hiding when his key facilitator was picked up by the secret service from that area on the polling day, and he was captured later. According to sources some other terror facilitators were also captured after initial interrogation of Farooqi.
Yet in another similar action, Abid Baig Muawiya, a suspect involved in Youhanabad terrorist attack, was captured by one of the premier secret services from Bhatta Chowk, Lahore. Abid is thought to have facilitated the suicide bombers who attacked churches in Youhanabad.