SUMMARY

In recent years, Pakistan has experienced an enormous increase in the number and activities of militant Islamist groups. Among these are local groups like the Pakistani Taleban TTP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that target the Pakistani government or launch sectarian attacks against the minority Shia Muslims. However, the local militants have close links to foreign outfits from Afghanistan, numerous al-Qaida affiliated cells and militants from Central and Southeast Asia who use the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border region in north-western Pakistan as a safe haven and training grounds. The activities of local and foreign militants have caused the Pakistan army to launch several large offensives in recent years and the U.S. forces increasingly target terrorists in north-western Pakistan with airstrikes by UVAs (unmanned aerial vehicle).

Fedayeen Islam is one of the local outfits based in north-western Pakistan and the group’s declared goals are to force the U.S. and NATO to withdraw from Pakistan and to cease their strikes against militants in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In line with these demands, Fedayeen Islam has attacked soft targets in Pakistan that claimed the lives of many civilians, among them many foreigners.

The event that allowed for the inclusion of Fedayeen Islam in UCDP one-sided violence was a devastating attack carried out by suicide bombers using a truck with 600 kg of explosives against the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, leaving 54 people dead. The bomb exploded at about 8 p.m., a time when the restaurants in the hotel were full of guests and Muslim guests broke their daily fast during the Ramadan period.

Fedayeen Islam first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 2008 when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached on 20 September that year, when 54 civilians were killed in a suicide attack targeting a hotel in Islamabad.