Asma Mirza and Adil Najam
(New videos and pictures added).
At aftaar time, Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was attacked by an explosive truck. Reportedly it has totally destroyed the hotel. This was the second bomb blast at the hotel in less than a year, adds to the feeling that Islamabad is now a major target of these dastardly killers (here, here, here). The pictures (from BBC) tell part of the story. But only a part.
One should note that this was the biggest of but just one of three suicide bomb blasts in Pakistan. The other two were in the tribal areas of Pakistan where Pakistan military was targeted.
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These are yet more in the long string of attacks on Pakistan. A list so long that one has even lost a sense of how long it is!
Here is an incomplete list of only the ‘major’ suicide attacks on Pakistan this year (from The News):
More than 1,200 people have been killed in attacks, most of them suicide bombings blasts, in the past year. Here is a list of major attacks since the start of 2008:
January 10: Sixteen police and four civilians killed in a suicide bomb attack on police outside the high court in the city of Lahore.
January 14: Bomb kills 10 people at a crowded street market in Karachi.
February 9: Suicide bomber kills 25 people at opposition election rally in the northwestern town of Charsadda.
February 16: Suicide car bomber strikes a rally by party of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto in the northwestern tribal town of Parachinar, killing 37.
February 22: Roadside bomb hits wedding party in northern Swat, killing at least 14 people.
February 25: Suicide bomber kills army surgeon general Lieutenant General Mushtaq Baig and seven other people in Rawalpindi.
February 29: A suicide bomber kills 44 people in Mingora, the main town in the troubled Swat valley, during the funeral of three policemen killed by a roadside bomb earlier in the day.
March 2: Suicide bomber kills 43 at a meeting of anti-militant tribal elders in the northwestern district of Darra Adam Khel.
March 4: Two suicide bombers attack Pakistan Naval War College in Lahore, killing five people and wounding 19.
March 10: Suicide attackers detonate two huge truck bombs in Lahore, killing 26 people and partly demolishing the Federal Investigation Agency building in the city.
March 15: Bomb blast at Italian restaurant in Islamabad kills a Turkish woman and wounds 10 others, including four agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
May 19: Suicide bomber kills 13 at an army bakery in the northwestern town of Mardan.
July 2: Suicide car bomb outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad kills eight people.
July 6: Suicide bomber kills 15 people in an attack on police in Islamabad during a rally to mark the anniversary of an army raid on the radical Red Mosque.
August 12: Roadside bomb rips through Pakistan air force bus in Peshawar, killing 13.
August 19: Suicide bomber kills 23 people at a hospital in northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan.
August 21: Twin suicide attacks kill at least 57 people outside Pakistan’s main arms factory in Wah, near Islamabad.
August 28: A bomb attack targeting policemen kill 10 people in the northwest garrison town of Bannu near the Afghan border.
September 3: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani escapes an apparent assassination attempt when two shots hit his motorcade, just three days before the country’s presidential election.
September 6: Suicide bomber kills 33 people at a security checkpoint near Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.
September 11: Suspected militants hurl grenades and fire into a mosque in Peshawar killing at least 20 worshippers.
September 20: A suspected suicide attack outside the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad killing at least 40 people, with more feared trapped inside the building.
According to police sources, the attacking truck was carrying 1000 KG (1 Ton) of explosives. Causing massive damage and causalities. Supposedly F-5 is one of the most secure area of Islamabad. 40+ killed in this havoc and many injured.The security was even tighter today than usual because the new President, Asif Ali Zardari, was making his first address to the parliament. Some wonder how related this was to what he had to say there:
The ones killed include the drivers who were waiting outside in parking lot and the large number of security guards. Also note, just next to Marriott there is a bus stop as well and a queue of taxis wait there. Emergency declared in all hospitals.Gas pipelines was exploded in the process causing more damage. Building nearby such as Balochistan House, Gulshan e Jinnah (living apartments for federal govt. employees) badly affected as well.
According to the news analysts as seen reporting on TV, it can be one of the biggest explosion seen in Pakistan’s history. Analyst Najam Sethi aptly said, “This is 9/11 of Pakistan“.
Allah will deal with those who committed this action. If the Taliban did it, then it goes to show what type of pressure they have been under from constant attacks on their homes from all four sides that they have become very irrational. May Allah relieve the difficulties of all Muslims.
Looking at the Zardari speech and his pledge (for which he needs support) for fighting the “enemies”, a very interesting history prespective should be mentioned.
There were bombings in Dublin, Ireland in 1970’s precisely when the Irish parliment was contemplating severe/unjust laws to combat terror. But, such laws were difficult to pass for the government until the news of the bombings spread, the IRA was blamed and lo and behold, the laws were passed! Later, it was found that this was a conpiracy by the British intelligence on the behalf of the Loyalists.
Today’s bombing surely will give Zardari more support than before.
Umar, After 7 years of fighting this, do you know who the enemy is? Do you know which seminary the next bomber will come from? Do you know the source of more than a 1000kg of high explosives that was used here? I don’t think it came from Pakistan Army. Can you imagine zeolots going around the major cities in trucks loaded with high explosives and no one having a clue; until they strike.
It is overly simplistic to assume that we can bomb these people out of existence. Sometimes, “discretion is the better part of valor”. It is also not a sign of weakness, or lack of our resolve. In this case, as you suggested, it is the tactics that need to change. We have to stop towing America’s line and stop this mad rush to death. The solution will only come from within, but there is no magic cure, and it will not happen overnight.
I read the Owen Bennett-Jones article this morning too… it nicely sums up how so many Pakistanis let their anti-American sentiments cloud their judgment of the Taliban… Charlie’s Aunt could claim she is anti-American and go on a rampage and our people would not say a word against her… herein lies the crux of our problems today… one can only hope that after such carnage, our people would see the light of day and call a spade a spade and back the action against the Taliban… discussing tactics is one thing, as is opposing US violation of airspace, but it is really disappointing to see that so many of our compatriots oppose the essence of the action itself… in fact, the Pakistani liberal/left should take a leaf out of the right wing’s collaboration with the Americans in the 80’s… Hameed Gul, the hero of every right wing nut in Pakistan, defends his and other Generals’ actions in the 80’s by saying that if interests coincide, there is no harm in collaborating with anyone… it is time the right wing is given a taste of its own medicine… the former PPP minister in Owen Bennett-Jones’ article, and others of his ilk, who are liberal/secular/leftist but anti-American, should swallow a little pride and support the efforts to finish the Taliban, because in the long run it is worth it…
you have to realize why this is happening.
The country is at war. The Americans attack our people and our leaders are all enemies of Islam. This is a battle for Muslims and sometimes people die in battles. The people who live in Islanabad or go to Marriot are not ordinary Muslims they go for alcohol and outside Masters.
Inshallah the righteous will win and when we have Shariah law in Pakistan it will all be worth it
This report from BBC’s Owen Bennett Jones is worth reading to understand what is happening here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own _correspondent/7623097.stm
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Turning to the Taleban in Pakistan
US raids on Taleban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistani territory have caused outrage in Pakistan. And that has added to the loathing that some people there have long felt for the way that the US conducts itself on the world stage, as Owen Bennett-Jones discovers.
Many Pakistanis resent what they see as heavy-handed US tactics “I would rather live in the dark ages under the Taleban than be subservient to any foreign power.” The unexpected comment comes from an urbane, sophisticated and, I had always thought, Westernised Pashtun lawyer.
He wears none of the badges of Islamic piety – a beard, for example – and he normally sports a navy blazer not the local shalwar kameez. He is a former minister with the Pakistan People’s Party, the most liberal in Pakistan.
Rejecting the West
The word liberal in the Pakistani context means modern, educated, secular rather than theocratic and, up until now at least, pro-Western.
“You can’t mean it,” I protested. “Do you know what the Taleban were like in Afghanistan when they ran it, with compulsory prayers five times a day, do you want that?”
“Look,” he said. “I can deal with Taleban, they are my own people. They come from here. I know them. “I will be able to get around them. But the Americans never. No way.”
That is how badly the battle for hearts and minds is going in Pakistan. It could scarcely be worse.
Taken aback by that conversation, I chatted about it with another senior Pakistani politician, a senator, again a well known liberal.
“I agree with him,” he said. “Is there is no end to it? The Americans are now bombing Pakistani people. What are they doing here 12,000 miles away from home?”
And he told me about his children, four boys.
“I sent them to the UK for their education,” he said, “I spent all my money on it. They had five, six years in England at boarding schools, it was a crucial time of their lives, they were young.
“They could have stayed and settled down there but they all choose not to. They didn’t want to. All four are living here in Pakistan and praying five times a day.
Anti-Americanism in Pakistan has reached quite fantastic levels “I don’t pray five times a day,” he said. “They do. Why? Because you in the West have forced them away, forced them towards Islam. You have forced them out.”
Again, I was taken aback. Apart from the familiar complaints about foreign policy, what had those boys seen in their English boarding school that they did not like?
Drunkenness, I guess. Consumerism, maybe. Disrespect for the elderly always shocks Pakistanis, so perhaps that.
I guess that seen through some young Pakistani eyes there are things we do that they do not want.
Still, anti-Americanism in Pakistan has reached quite fantastic levels.
There are now suicide bombs every few days and no-one doubts that the Taleban recruit, train and equip the bombers.
After one recent suicide attack, the brother of one of the victims was quoted in the press.
Did he blame the Taleban? He did not. “America is responsible for my brother’s death,” he said. “If the Americans went back home everything would be calm here.”
There is, I think, universal agreement amongst Pakistanis that, if the US continues to rely so heavily on military firepower in Afghanistan, and increasingly in Pakistan too, then the Taleban will win.
Preaching moderation
And, in fact, elsewhere in the world, there are signs that the US is using much more subtle and maybe more effective tactics.
The Taleban are winning friends at the expense of the US in Pakistan
In a US base on the outskirts of Baghdad, for example, where captured insurgents are held, US taxpayers are paying the salaries of some heavily vetted Iraqi clerics who preach moderation.
I met one of them recently. When he relaxes he mooches around in an England football shirt, when he is working he wears the long flowing, gold-edged robes denoting his clerical status.
He told me about a session he had with a group of 20 recently detained Iraqi Takfiris.
Takfiris are really the last word in intolerance. They believe that anyone who does not share their very rigid interpretation of Islam is an infidel and should be killed.
The cleric described walking into the room where the Takfiris where waiting for him and offering the traditional greeting: “Salaam Aleikum”.
The leader of the group responded by hurling his slippers into the cleric’s face.
‘With these guys you cannot let something like that go,” the cleric told me, “or you lose all authority.”
‘Battle of wits’
The cleric looked the Takfiri leader in the eye and asked: “What did I just say to you?”
“You said Salaam Aleikum,” the man replied.
“And what does that signify?” asked the cleric.
The Takfiri leader looked confused. “The word Salaam is one of the 99 names of Allah,” the cleric went on.
“You have just thrown your slippers at Allah.” He then turned to the other 19 Takfiris. “This man is an infidel,” he said, “are you going to kill him?” He turned and left the room.
That night, the guards woke the cleric at 3am and rushed him down to the detention centre.
The Takfiri leader was huddled in the corner of the room shivering, his arms around his knees. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Please get me away from here. I think they are going to kill me,” he begged.
“So, in just 12 hours,” the cleric concluded, “I dealt with the leader of some of the most hard-line people ever captured in Iraq.”
“It’s a battle of wits,” I said. The cleric laughed. “Let’s see who wins.”