Militant leader threatens more school attacks after deadly assault
DERA ISAMAIL KHAN, Pakistan -- The head of a breakaway Taliban faction behind this week's attack at a northwestern Pakistani university that killed 21 people, most of them students, threatened on Friday to carry out more attacks on schools and universities across the country.
On Wednesday, Islamic militants stormed the campus of the Bacha Khan university in the town of Charsadda, gunning down students and teachers, and triggering a gunbattle that lasted for hours before the four gunmen were slain and the military declared an end to the siege.
The assault echoed the horrifying 2014 attack by the Taliban on an army-run school in the nearby city of Peshawar that left 150 dead, 144 of them children, and raised yet again questions about whether Pakistan's security forces are able to protect the country's educational institutions from extremists.
The leader of the splinter Taliban group that claimed responsibility for the attack, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, said in a video released Friday on social media that the Charsadda assault was just the start and promised his followers would hit the "evil democratic system" at its base.
Mansoor said Pakistan's educational institutions provide the future workforce for the military and the government - all of which work against the "will of God."
"Pakistan's evil democratic system, its military and political leadership have these educational institutions as their nurseries," Mansoor said. "It is from there they get their people, these institutions bear them fruit."
"We have decided to target schools, colleges and universities from now on," he said. "We will demolish the foundation of this evil system."
Along with Mansoor's threats, the video shows a presumably older segment, depicting the four gunmen from the Charsadda assault practicing with assault rifles at an undisclosed location. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified but it was similar to previous messages released by the group.
In the video, Mansour says Pakistan's rulers are challenging the "will of God, instead of bowing before him despite repeated warning from Allah in the form of earthquakes, floods and tornadoes."
Although his group quickly took responsibility for the university attack, a spokesman for the larger Taliban organization, led by Mullah Fazlullah, denied having anything to do with it and called it "un-Islamic." Muhammad Khorasani, the Tehrik-e-Taliban spokesman, said they also disown Mansoor's group.
Islamabad-based analyst Imtiaz Gul said the Charsadda attack showed that the objective of Mansoor's group is to create instability. The biggest danger it poses it to the Pakistani youth, Gul said.
"Such groups can easily indoctrinate frustrated youth and exploit their energy for their own agenda," he said.
While the number of Mansoor's followers may not be clear at the present, they obviously "have enough to create mayhem," he added.
After the 2014 Peshawar school massacre, Taliban militants were united in taking responsibility for the violence and some analysts say that the divisions now in the Taliban over Wednesday's attack probably have more to do with a fear of retribution than a reflection of a deeply fractured and split militant movement.