Pakistani Army Attacked by Suicide Bomber

In the wake of the missile attack on a madrassa in the Bajaur region of Northwestern Pakistan which killed 80 people in an attempt to assassinate Ayman al Zawahiri, attacks on Pakistani military forces by groups aligned with the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda were probably inevitable:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 8 — At least 35 soldiers were killed and dozens were wounded this morning after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a military training base in northwestern Pakistan, military officials said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but the attack seems to have come in retaliation for last month’s claim by Pakistani military that it had killed about 80 militants in a madrasa, a religious school, in Bajaur tribal area, analysts and officials here said.

The attack in the town of Dargai in Northwest Frontier Province, about 85 miles northwest of Islamabad, occurred at about 8:40 a.m. Fresh recruits were undergoing training in Punjab Regiment’s Training Centre.

And guess what. Americans may be the next target for those seeking vengeance for the madrassa killings …

(cont.)

“We expected it,” said a retired general, Mirza Aslam Beg, the former chief of the Pakistani Army, in a telephone interview. ‘This is tribal vendetta. You must understand the psyche of the tribal people. They had announced they will take revenge and I think they will try to square off the number’. […]

“When a Pathan says he is going to take revenge, he will do it,” Mr. Sehgal said, referring to the ethnic Pathans, also referred as Pukhtoons, of the North West Frontier Province and the semi-autonomous tribal areas.

General Beg called the attack “a manifestation of the wrong policies of the government.”

While he believed that revenge was the sole motive, he noted that “Nobody in Pakistan believes that the military strike in Bajaur was carried out by Pakistanis,” a reference to the common perception in the country that American predator was responsible for the aerial strike.

Note how the reporter for the Times ever so gently describes the belief of local Pakistani tribespeople that the US was responsible for the madrassa attack: “… a reference to the common perception in the country that [an] American predator was responsible for the aerial strike.” That’s a nice euphemistic turn of phrase, don’t you think?

And it doesn’t bode well for the political stability of Pakistan, or President Musharraf’s regime, our ally in the “War on Terror” and the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons:

Some analysts saw the suicide attack having greater ramifications.

”It only goes to show how dangerous it has become and the wider cleavage between the military and the civilians,” said Talat Masood, a former army general and military analyst said.

Again, that’s a very diplomatic way of describing the situation. Let’s see how the BBC sizes up the same situation, shall we?

Wednesday’s attack by militants at the Pakistan army base at Dargai has profound implications for the government. […]

…[E]lements of Afghan resistance fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujahideen commander, are also known to have sanctuaries in Bajaur.

US and Afghan officials have accused these groups of launching attacks on coalition forces in the neighbouring Afghan province of Kunar.

Can it be that some of these elements, who have traditionally looked up to the Pakistani military establishment for support and protection, have now turned on their mentor?

If they have, the message is ominous.

Never before have so many Pakistan army soldiers died in a single attack by the militants.

The truth is that these militants have long enjoyed a favored relationship with Pakistan’s military, and especially the with the more radical elements within the ISI, Pakistan’s secretive intelligence agency. Now, the disconnect between a government allied with the United States and also heavily involved with the Taliban and other Islamic militants in the region is likely to tear Musharraf’s increasingly fragile regime apart. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that he survived a coup attempt and a missile attack on one of his residences. Whether he agreed to the attack in Bajaur in response to that, or was pressured by the Bush administration to sign off on it really doesn’t matter that much. Either way, he has increased the risk to himself personally, and to the viability of his government, from the militants.

Indeed, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan. Whatever government arises in its place is likely to oppose US policy in the region, provide support and sanctuary to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups, and pose a much greater danger to Hamid Karzai’s regime in Afghanistan, and to the security of India, Israel and America.

Pakistan