Asia-Pacific, Civil Society, Headlines | Analysis

PAKISTAN: Cafe Bombing – Fallout of Musharraf’s Pro-US Policy

Analysis by Amir Mir

ISLAMABAD, Mar 17 2008 (IPS) - As Pakistan’s new parliament meets for its inaugural session on Monday legislators must ponder over a wave of bomb attacks, the latest of which killed one weekend diner and injured 12 others at an Italian eatery in the capital, frequented by Westerners.

According to Islamabad police chief, Shahid Nadeem Baloch, the attack on the Luna Caprese restaurant on Saturday killed a Turkish woman employed as a nurse at the U.S. embassy here.

Among the injured were five U.S citizens, four of them working for that country’s top sleuthing agency, the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI). The others included three British nationals, two Japanese and one Canadian citizen.

In a year-long campaign of bombings, Islamist militants have generally targeted Pakistani army or police establishments and personnel – or politicians perceived to be pro-West, starting with President Pervez Musharraf himself.

Saturday’s blast occurred in one of the busiest areas of Islamabad, the Jinnah Super Market, which is usually crowded in the evenings and regarded as a sensitive area because the residences of several top foreign diplomats are located nearby.

Fears are being expressed in Islamabad about the negative effects of the bomb attack. The British and U.S. missions in the capital have already issued advisories to their nationals, that may lead to a flight of foreigners including diplomatic staff from the U.S., British and Canadian diplomatic missions.

“Since the 2002 church blast in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave, Saturday’s attack was the first incident in the federal capital in which foreign nationals were the direct target,” said Pakistan’s caretaker interior minister Lt. Gen. (retd) Hamid Nawaz.

Many in the Pakistani establishment believe that the attack in the heart of Islamabad was probably meant to pressurise the new government to stop the country’s increasingly costly role in the war on terror.

On Sunday a missile attack in Pakistan’s tribal South Waziristan killed 20 people according to the state-run Pakistan TV PTV). Several such strikes have been carried out by U.S.-led forces in adjacent Afghanistan – the last of which killed top al-Qaeda leader Abu Laith al-Libi – adding to the Musharraf regime’s unpopularity.

The year 2007 was considered to be the bloodiest since Pakistan joined the U.S.-led war against al-Qaeda, Taliban and other militant groups. Deadly suicide attacks and roadside bombings rocked the country, from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), adjacent to Afghanistan, to Karachi, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 people, including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

However, if the violent trend recorded in 2008 is anything to go by, it could end up being the worst year ever, given the fact that 188 people have already died in 17 incidents of bombings during the first 75 days.

Saturday’s bombing was the third time a major Pakistani city came under attack this month. On Mar. 4, two suicide bombers attacked the Navy War College in Lahore, killing eight people. And on Mar. 11, two suicide attacks targeting the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) killed 32 people in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

It was after those attacks that Pakistani authorities sought assistance from a team of U.S. counterterrorism experts. Pakistani intelligence officials in Islamabad, while requesting anonymity, say the four FBI personnel injured at the Luna Caprese were in fact part of a seven-member special task force.

These intelligence officials have opined that the al-Qaeda linked militant group Harkatul Jehadul Islami (HUJI) was most likely involved in the Lahore and the Islamabad blasts. They were probably carried out in revenge for the arrest on Feb. 26 of HUJI leader Qari Saifullah Akhtar who is alleged to be involved in Bhutto’s assassination on Dec. 27.

Intelligence sources say at least six suspected HUJI militants, arrested after the Naval War College suicide attacks, were being interrogated at the FIA headquarters. On the morning of Mar. 15 an anti-terrorism court in Karachi had ordered a 12-day police remand for Qari Saifullah and by evening the Islamabad bombing had take place.

With such attacks on the rise, people are questioning Musharraf’s approach to countering the al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and saying that his support for the U.S.-led war on terror in Afghanistan has only fuelled more violence at home.

Pakistan’s leading terrorism expert and writer Rahimullah Yousafzai told IPS: “The complexity of the conflict now raging in Pakistan could be judged from the fact that most Pakistanis refuse to believe that military operations in the tribal areas or elsewhere in the country are in our interest. They consider it as a war being fought on Pakistan’s soil at the behest of the U.S. to protect and promote American interest. It is an unpopular war – someone else’s war – that has heaped suffering on ordinary people of Pakistan.”

Writer and analyst Nasim Zehra expressed similar views while talking to IPS. “There is no evidence that President Musharraf’s policy of making Pakistan a U.S. ally in the war on terror has produced positive results in last five years. As a matter of fact, we joined the U.S. war on terror without a strategy on where we will set the limits, how we would protect Pakistani lives, dignity and rights. Instead of getting out of the firing line of the U.S., we actually brought fire into our own home by allowing the U.S. access to bases and to our airspace. Therefore, there is an increasing perception among the people of Pakistan that this is not our war.”

“As the extremist militants are now pressurising the incoming government to review its pro-U.S. policy, Pakistan’s greatest challenge is a politician-led national consensus on how to battle this endless bloodletting. It requires going back to the drawing board -asking the whats and whys of this growing nightmare,’’ she said.