For Raja Umer Khattab, Karachi changed before the city fully understood what was happening. Moving to the Sindh Police’s specialised unit in early 2002 — later named the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) — the veteran police officer was deeply familiar with Karachi’s typical violence: primarily deadly sectarian conflicts that seldom utilised explosives.

But the threat rising in the shadow of 9/11, 25 years ago, was unlike anything Khattab and his colleagues had ever faced.

As American firepower ousted the Taliban’s first regime and shattered the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, the war spilled across the border. It didn’t stop in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt; it flowed south into the sprawling, chaotic metropolis of Karachi — quietly at first and then with devastating force.

The city was becoming something its law enforcement agencies had never been trained to confront: a staging ground for “a transnational jihadist war”, says Khattab, a highly decorated officer who recently retired after spending the bulk of his 35-year police career on the CTD frontlines.

While Pakistan’s tribal areas offered sanctuary, Karachi offered reach. Highways connected the port city and the country’s business hub to the rest of the country and its international airport linked to the wider world. Its vast population provided anonymity, while established networks of jihadi groups and madressahs [religious seminaries] supplied contacts, funding, logistics and recruits.

A quarter of a century after the infamous events of September 11, 2001, which launched America’s so-called ‘War on Terror’, Zia Ur Rehman looks back at how those events transformed militancy in Pakistan in general and the city of Karachi in particular. Drawing on his own reporting over two decades and the experiences of recently retired Raja Umer Khattab, one of the frontline police officers involved in counter-terrorism operations, he assesses how the terror landscape has changed in these 25 years…

A quarter of a century after the infamous events of September 11, 2001, which launched America’s so-called ‘War on Terror’, Zia Ur Rehman looks back at how those events transformed militancy in Pakistan in general and the city of Karachi in particular. Drawing on his own reporting over two decades and the experiences of recently retired Raja Umer Khattab, one of the frontline police officers involved in counter-terrorism operations, he assesses how the terror landscape has changed in these 25 years…

Then came the attacks. In January 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. In May 2002, a suicide bomber targeted a bus carrying French naval engineers outside the Sheraton Hotel. The next month, the US Consulate was struck. Christian institutions came under attack. Other incidents followed in rapid succession.

Investigators immediately spotted the fingerprints of displaced Al Qaeda operatives fusing with local factions. “We realised almost immediately that this was completely different from the violence we knew,” Khattab recalls. “We had to adapt fast, leveraging the deep human intelligence we’d cultivated over years on the sectarian frontlines.”

That distinction would define the next two decades.

Karachi became a place where global jihadist networks, Pakistani militant organisations, sectarian groups, violent political actors and criminal networks intersected — sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing and often becoming difficult to distinguish from one another.

Khattab lists one militant organisation after another that had operated in Karachi: “Al Qaeda, Jundullah, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi [LJ], Sipah-i-Muhammad Pakistan [SMP], Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Al-Alami, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan [TTP], Ansarul Sharia, Baqiatullah, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent [AQIS], Islamic State Khorasan Province [SKP], the Zainabiyoun Brigade, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar…”

He pauses and admits that he can no longer remember the names of all the groups he had dealt with over the years. Banned Baloch and Sindhi ethno-separatist groups, including the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army, added another layer to the city’s already volatile militant landscape.

The important story, however, is not simply that militant groups operated in Karachi. It is how the nature of that militancy changed after 9/11.

By 2009, the TTP’s presence had begun to transform Karachi’s militant landscape. The militants displaced from tribal areas by Pakistani military operations did not simply seek refuge in the city. They increasingly established themselves in its urban periphery, particularly in Pakhtun-majority neighbourhoods. Raja Umer Khattab describes the period from 2008 to 2014 as one of “absolute devastation” for Pakistan and Karachi.

By 2009, the TTP’s presence had begun to transform Karachi’s militant landscape. The militants displaced from tribal areas by Pakistani military operations did not simply seek refuge in the city. They increasingly established themselves in its urban periphery, particularly in Pakhtun-majority neighbourhoods. Raja Umer Khattab describes the period from 2008 to 2014 as one of “absolute devastation” for Pakistan and Karachi.

The city soon became the frontline of a high-stakes international manhunt.

Hadi Kakar, a Quetta tea stall owner, remembers September 2002 with vivid clarity. A large number of uniformed police and plainclothes intelligence operatives suddenly converged on Karachi’s Defence area, surrounding a three-story building near his shop.

“Heavy gunfire broke out for hours, but we were completely in the dark,” Kakar recalls. “When police officers stopped by for tea later, they mentioned some Arab militants had been arrested.”

The raid unfolded on the first anniversary of 9/11. The primary target was Ramzi Abdullah bin al-Shibh, a key Yemeni operative who later acknowledged his role as a central planner of the 9/11 attacks.

His capture was part of a sweeping dragnet triggered by Pakistan’s entry into the US-led ‘War on Terror.’ Working alongside America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the........

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