“The ongoing crackdown has made it difficult to attack hard targets, so the group has chosen to attack soft targets, such as poor labourers of Punjabi or Pashtun origin, or rail tracks in abandoned areas.”
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“The SRA has adopted a past strategy of the Baloch Liberation Army, which used to target Punjabi teachers, barbers and labourers in Balochistan,” said a senior law enforcement official. On June 24, gunmen killed a Pashtun cobbler in District Kambar-Shahdadkot’s Naseerabad. On August 13, SRA militants killed Rana Tanveer at his cold drinks shop, and on August 2, Pashtun trader Syed Tajuddin in Larkana city. On September 12, unknown gunmen killed Muhammad, a Pashtun car showroom owner, in District Dadu’s Mehar city. On October 5, two labourers from Punjab’s Rahim Yar Khan district were gunned down in Kambar city. The report also listed the recent attacks on Punjabis and Pashtuns whose responsibility the SRA claimed. “The deteriorating law and order situation is begetting sporadic target killings of Punjabi and Pathan settlers by anti-state anarchists,” said the letter, a copy of which is available with The News.
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The concerns Last month, in a report on the law and order situation of Larkana Division that was sent to the Sindh Home Department, a security agency showed its concerns over the rise in target killings of non-Sindhis, particularly Punjabis and Pashtuns, in the region. In May 2020, the federal government had banned the SRA, along with two other groups - the Sindhudesh Liberation Army (SLA) and the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz-Arisar - for their involvement in terrorism in the province. Rajput’s assassination is the latest in the SRA’s ongoing attacks targeting Punjabi and Pashtun residents as well as law enforcement officials in various parts of the province, particularly in Larkana Division.
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The SRA has claimed responsibility for Rajput’s murder, warning “all settlers to leave Sindh”. Sindh Governor Imran Ismail also condemned his killing. Rajput had participated in the general elections from NA-203 in 20, and served as an elected local government representative in the past. On Saturday, gunmen killed Rana Sakhawat Rajput, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader and an ethnic Punjabi, in a daylight ambush at his flour mill in the Lalu Ranuk area of the Kambar-Shahdadkot district.