Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – the Pakistani Taliban – has ramped up its terror attacks on the country's all-powerful military in recent months, entrenching its influence in the tribal borderlands.
This surge in violence is causing increasing tension with Afghanistan, which Pakistan accuses of harbouring TTP militants. Last month Pakistan launched air strikes against alleged TTP hideouts in Afghanistan, prompting Afghanistan to retaliate with strikes of its own.
The TTP, founded in 2007 and aiming to create an Islamic emirate in Pakistan, has been responsible for some of the country's "deadliest attacks", said Al Jazeera. Last year more than 2,500 people were killed in terror attacks – most of them by the TTP – making it the deadliest year in a decade.
For two decades Islamabad covertly supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, hoping it would "rein in" the TTP in return, said The New York Times. That, experts say, was "a strategic miscalculation".
Locals believe that TTP militants could now number up to 20,000, said The Diplomat. It effectively operates a "parallel governance system". Pakistan's military has warned that it will no longer tolerate "safe havens" for TTP fighters in Afghanistan. It has begun referring to the TTP as khawarij ("outside the fold of Islam") and calling on Afghanistan to crack down on the group.
The economic interdependence between Pakistan and Afghanistan means "neither side can afford a breakdown in relations", Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US and the UN, told the Financial Times. "But this level of cross-border violence can't go on." | 
