Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa): Timeline (Terrorist Activities) -2005

Police in the Chitral district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) reportedly arrested two activists of the outlawed Sunni group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), on January 4 for their alleged involvement in an attack on the offices of Aga Khan Health Services and killing two of its workers on December 26, 2004. District Police Officer of Chitral, Muhammad Saeed Khan, was quoted as saying in The News that the accused were locals, identified as Juma Khan and Rafiq. Read less...

Lieutenant General (Retd) Iftikhar Hussain Shah, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Governor, is reported to have said in Peshawar on January 6 that over 100 terrorists who fled the military operation in the tribal areas could regroup. According to Shah, "The military in its operation against miscreants, particularly during the last three months in Mehsud tribe areas, destroyed their logistics and hideouts and forced them to flee to Afghanistan and Balochistan." He added that almost 100 terrorists expelled from this belt were now trying to lure the unemployed youth. Read less...

A wanted militant from South Waziristan, identified as Maulvi Bashir, is reported to have surrendered in Peshawar on January 11. Read less...

The North West Frontier Province Governor, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, is reported to have said in Peshawar on January 12 that the Government is well prepared to commence operations against foreign terrorists as they are regrouping in the southern areas and one of the top Al Qaeda operatives, Tahir Yaldesh, is organising their activities. In an interview to Statesman, Shah ruled out any amnesty to the tribal militant ‘commander’, Abdullah Mehsud, saying that he has to ‘surrender or face elimination’. Read less...

The opposition alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), held protest demonstrations on January 14 in different cities as part of its anti-uniform campaign and demanded that President Pervez Musharraf should step down as president and army chief. Speaking in Islamabad, Deputy Parliamentary leader of the MMA, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, said that by violating the constitutional provisions and keeping two offices with him, Gen. Musharraf had become a controversial man and now he must quit both the offices. According to Dawn, protest rallies were also organised in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. Read less...

Dawn reports that well-placed sources in security agencies said they believed that Jamil was in contact with Libyan national Abu Al Faraj, one of the most wanted Al Qaeda operatives. They also believe that Abu Faraj is somewhere in Pakistan and Jamil may be of help in tracking him down. Read less...

On January 17, police in Swat region of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) arrested a man who is said to have confessed to his role in high-profile terrorist attacks, including an attempt to kill President Pervez Musharraf and a suicide bomb attack on the US Consulate in Karachi. Deputy Inspector-General (Malakand) Attaullah Wazir, who commands the police in the northern districts of the NWFP, stated that Mohammad Jamil Memon had been detained in Swat in December on some suspicion, but his interrogation led investigators to believe that he was not an ordinary criminal. Son of Usman Ghani Memon of Nazimabad, Jamil belonged to the militant Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Al-alami organization and had received training in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, the official said. Wazir said that Jamil had told investigators that he was an expert in attaching switches to explosives and had done that job for the attack on President Musharraf's motorcade in Karachi on April 26, 2002, that failed to work and was subsequently detected and defused. Read less...

The Interior Ministry on January 20 declared twenty cities sensitive with respect to law and order and issued special security guidelines for the occasion of the muslim festival of Eidul Azha. Declaring Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Sibi, Gwadar, Mianwali, Hyderabad, Larkana, Multan, Faisalabad, Jhang, Mardan, Gilgit, DI Khan, Kohat, Sheikhupura and Gujrat sensitive, the Interior Ministry issued a circular to the home secretaries of the four provinces. The circular contained special security arrangements in the respective areas for the occasion of Eid and warned that extremists and terrorists of banned groups and organisations could disrupt law and order. Read less...