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Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani Taliban launched a web based journal geared towards ladies this week. The third of its type in six years, the journal comes at a time when the militant group formally referred to as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is staging a resurgence with near-daily lethal assaults on Pakistani safety forces.
Titled Banat-E-Khadeejatul Kubra, which suggests Daughters of Khadeejatul Kubra, the 36-page Urdu-language journal launched July 16 is known as after Khadeeja, the primary spouse of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam.
The look
The pink and white cowl contains a picture of a warrior lady wearing black from head to toe with solely her eyes displaying, sitting on a white horse, able to shoot an arrow. For titles, the journal makes use of pink and pink colours, and plenty of floral motifs; nonetheless, all illustrations present ladies in lengthy, unfastened robes and face coverings. Not one of the drawings depicts any facial options.
The message
TTP, an ideological offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, launched its first official journal for ladies in mid-2017. Titled Sunnat-e-Khaula, that means The Method of Khaula, the journal was named after a feminine warrior from Prophet Muhammad’s time and inspired ladies to organize to combat.
A second journal, Khawateen Ka Jihad , or Ladies’s Holy Warfare, got here out in March after a niche of six years. Observers say that was nearly a trial run for the most recent launch.
The newest concern named after Prophet Muhammad’s spouse focuses on ladies’s home obligations with an emphasis on serving and supporting males.
Feminist scholar and creator Afiya S. Zia informed VOA the agenda of this journal is to not unfold extremism however preserve a patriarchal establishment.
“It is to stabilize and help the extremist agenda just like the ‘B’ crew,” she mentioned in written feedback. “It provides ladies solely a supportive function – not suicide bombers or jihadists however daughters and wives who sacrifice their males for the trigger and testify to their martyrdom.”
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, a journalist and founding father of The Khorasan Diary, a web based information platform that focuses on militant exercise in Pakistan and Afghanistan, informed VOA TTP sees ladies as an asset in selling its extremist ideology.
Because the majority of Taliban and their households are Pashtun, Mehsud mentioned releasing {a magazine} in Urdu exhibits TTP is making an attempt to achieve a wider viewers.
“The truth that this journal has are available Urdu (Pakistan’s nationwide language) and never simply Pashto, exhibits that it isn’t simply Pashtun ladies however different too whom they [TTP] are creating content material for,” he mentioned.
In contrast to the Afghan Taliban who’ve put a ban on ladies’s schooling, the Pakistani Taliban help ladies’s proper to schooling on this journal. The writings, nonetheless, strongly criticize co-education with sweeping generalizations and declare sure topics like engineering “pointless” for ladies.
Zia mentioned the TTP takes a pro-education stance as a result of “there isn’t a urge for food for Afghan Taliban agenda in Pakistan – it needs to be a softer model.”
The timing
Though Pakistani navy operations dealt a large blow to the militant group, driving its management and plenty of fighters into Afghanistan within the 2010s, TTP has staged a comeback for the reason that Afghan Taliban regained energy in Kabul in August 2021.
Below the management of Noor Wali Mehsud, allegedly current in Afghanistan, TTP has regrouped, reorganized, and expanded by taking greater than 30 different militant outfits into its fold.
The group has claimed accountability for greater than 300 assaults this yr, during which greater than 800 folks, largely safety personnel, have been killed or injured.
The Pakistani Taliban’s official media outlet, Umar Media, named after Afghan Taliban’s founder Mullah Umar, has been ramping up manufacturing of slick video and textual content content material.
Whereas Pakistan has repeatedly focused TTP’s operational capability, journalist Mehsud mentioned the state has not centered sufficiently on countering its extremist ideology.
“[This] is why the TTP manages to stage a resurgence many times. For any militant group, their middle of gravity is their ideology. Now we have seen that teams weaken operationally however their ideology stays intact due to which they bounce again once more.”
The journal, like different extremist content material, is accessible by way of varied social media accounts that handle to dodge scrutiny with intelligent use of key phrases and hashtags.
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