TTP terrorists using PUBG to chat, coordinate attacks: Police

They parachute from the sky, accumulate M416 rifles, grenades and bullet-proof vests, and then head to the school, the shelter or prison to kill their opponents. And while they are doing all this on the PUBG game, terrorists in Pakistan also plan real-world attacks.

Police in Pakistani’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan, say they have arrested five terrorists associated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) group who dropped messages in the PUBG mobile app to communicate with each other.

“This was the first time I came across something like this,” Zahid Ullah, the District Police Officer of Swat, tells TRT World.

“Generally, these militants use WhatsApp. But these militants found other ways to exchange messages.”

The five terrorists, aged between 18 and late 20s, were allegedly behind the deadly August 28 attack on a police station in the restive Swat region in which one policeman was killed.

The police used CCTV cameras to track them down.

“I don’t know much about PubG since I don’t play. But apparently, it’s popular among kids, and they can make chat groups and talk to each other there,” says Zahid Ullah.

TTP, a designated terrorist group, has been behind a deadly insurgency in Pakistan for years. Even though TTP is a separate entity from the Afghan Taliban, Islamabad accuses Kabul of giving shelter to TTP members who regularly move across the porous border between the two neighbours.

Afghanistan denies the charges.

The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies says in 2023, more than 600 people, including security soldiers and civilians, were killed in approximately 423 attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province where TTP is most active.

In June, Pakistan announced a counter-insurgency operation to flush out TTP terrorists from the mountainous border region.

Tensions have been high with the Afghan Taliban since Pakistan's forces carried out aerial strikes inside Afghanistan’s southeastern Paktika and Khost provinces in March this year.

Security officials say tracking TTP group remains difficult since they can easily cross the porous border. Technology has further allowed them to coordinate and hide their movements.

Swat’s police officer Zahid Ullah says that Telegram remains the most preferred app for the militants to communicate.

“We could see how they were using PUBG only after one of the suspects was arrested, and we asked him to access the phone and show us how it was all done.”

Pakistan, like other governments, has struggled to convince tech companies such as Facebook to divulge information about their users who have been accused of violating national security.

“Maybe it’s because we don’t have mutual agreements with these companies. You know how it is. We would need to facilitate them as well,” says Zahid Ullah.

But when it comes to PUBG, this is not the first time the wildly popular game has come on police radar.

The killer addiction

PUBG faced widespread backlash in 2022 when a 14-year-old gaming addict shot dead his mother and three siblings in the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The boy told investigators he thought his family members would come back to life like the game’s characters who resurrect or spawn back after being eliminated during play. His mother often scolded him for spending hours on the game.

At the time, Pakistan police asked the government to ban PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds). Internet service providers temporarily blocked it in Pakistan in 2020 after three teenage suicides were traced to the game.

Suicides and deaths linked to PUBG have rattled authorities in neighbouring India as well.

PUBG is a multiplayer game where teams are parachuted onto an island and fight to the last team standing.

PUBG, owned by the South Korean company Krafton, was launched in late 2017. Within months, it shot up the charts, becoming one of the most downloaded games in the world.