Terrorists risk Pakistan's future

Article from: The Australian
KARACHI: The assault yesterday on a police school and a wave of spectacular attacks underline Pakistan's weakness and the danger posed by Islamist militants to the future of the nuclear-armed nation.The commando-style assault on the training ground transformed a normally peaceful commuter belt near Pakistan's cultural capital of Lahore into a war zone, leaving as many as 35 people dead in pitched battles with the security forces.Analysts said the attack was a defiant message to US President Barack Obama, who has put Pakistan at the heart of the fight against al-Qa'ida, tripling US aid in a strategy that is aimed at reversing the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.Such is the scale of violence in the Muslim nation that Mr Obama called al-Qa'ida and its allies "a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within", and he urged Islamabad to demonstrate its commitment to eradicating the extremists.Mutahir Shaikh, an international relations expert at the University of Karachi, said the wave of attacks were a response to the US stand."The terrorists want to tell Obama and his Western allies they cannot be contained as Obama desired, and are still as powerful and strong as they have been for years now," Professor Shaikh said. "The attack proves the weakness of the state institutions and shows that a mere half-a-dozen professionally trained terrorists can take anyone hostage and occupy any establishment they like."Urban terrorism is now in vogue in our major cities."
Yesterday's attack mimicked the March 3 assault on Sri Lanka's cricket team in Lahore, where assailants on foot carrying backpacks of high-energy food and hand weapons killed eight Pakistanis and wounded seven members of the cricket squad.
Extremists opposed to the Pakistan Government's decision to side with the US in the war on terror have carried out a spate of bombings and other attacks that have killed nearly 1700 people in less than two years."This is further evidence of the growing threat of terrorism to Pakistan's state and society," security analyst Hasan Askari said after yesterday's assault."These groups want to paralyse the system of state in order to have greater freedom to pursue their ideological and political agenda inside and outside Pakistan," he said."An isolated Pakistan will be easily overwhelmed by terrorists, which the world should not allow them to do."Much of the unrest has been concentrated in the northwest, where the Pakistani army has been fighting the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. On Friday, a suicide bomber ripped through a packed mosque near the Afghan border, killing nearly 50 people.But the second attack in the Lahore area this month will fan fears that the net of violence is spreading."Such attacks again prove that all the outside world's security fears about Pakistan's lack of governance are true," said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, an academic at Karachi's Urdu University."These repeated attacks show total failure on the part of the Government's law-enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. Pakistan's future is at massive risk."Pakistan shelters a number of extremist groups, spanning banned Islamist organisations fighting for independence from Indian rule in Kashmir in the east, to the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in the west.Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik hinted that home-grown militant groups were behind yesterday's raid."Who is supporting them? Who is giving them weapons? Everyone knows these banned organisations, namely Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad," Mr Malik told the private-sector Geo television channel.Top officials in the US, Pakistan's key ally, have openly accused elements in the country's powerful intelligence agency of abetting al-Qa'ida.
"What we need to do is try to help the Pakistanis understand these groups are now an existential threat to them and we will be there as a steadfast ally for Pakistan," US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday.