In the predawn hours of a recent October morning, more than 10,000 riot police and paramilitary troops swept through the streets of a small city on the outskirts of Lahore, seeking to end a cycle of violence and capitulation that had dictated the tempo of Pakistan’s democracy for years.
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Their target? Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), a hardline Islamist movement that repeatedly paralysed major cities with its deadly protests, forced ministers into humiliating retreats and wielded the country’s colonial-era anti-blasphemy laws as both a weapon and a shield.
All that appeared to come to an end in early October, however, when security forces descended on a planned TLP march to Islamabad, stopping the thousands of activists who had planned to besiege the US embassy in protest against the war in Gaza – despite a ceasefire having already taken effect.
The crackdown was swift and decisive. Hundreds of mosques and seminaries affiliated with the TLP were subsequently seized by provincial authorities, with their management transferred to moderate clerics from the mainstream Barelvi movement – a spiritualist Sunni sect that, though affiliated with the TLP, generally rejects violence.
Pakistan formally designated the TLP as a terrorist organisation on October 23, grouping it with Baloch insurgents and extremists linked to al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The message was unambiguous: Pakistan’s state would no longer tolerate violent groups destabilising the country under the guise of religious piety.
When a group like the TLP attempts to create internal disorder, it objectively serves the agenda of Pakistan’s enemies
“I am confident that the government has made up its mind this time,” Abdul Qayyum, a retired lieutenant general and president of the influential Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society, told This Week in Asia.