Three Attacks in Pakistan Spotlight a Nation’s Rifts

By SALMAN MASOOD

Two bomb blasts rocked Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in southwest Pakistan, on Saturday, tearing through a bus and then a hospital where the victims of the first attack had been taken. Pakistani officials said that at least 10 women were killed when the first blast hit a university bus. At least 19 other students were wounded, a police officer, Mir Zubair Mahmood, told The Associated Press. A second explosion occurred as gunmen attacked the Bolan Medical Complex, where the wounded were brought for treatment. Senior Quetta officials were visiting the hospital when armed gunmen forced their way into the compound, leading to an exchange of heavy gunfire. Abdul Mansoor, the Quetta deputy commissioner, was among the people killed at the hospital, according to reports. The brazen attacks shook the country, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif instructed the interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, to assist the provincial government in controlling the situation. The attacks occurred shortly after militants destroyed a historic building early Saturday that once was used by the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The blast set off widespread panic. Analysts said the attack on the Jinnah building, a national monument, had symbolic importance, signifying the deep rifts in Pakistan. At least five militants attacked the building, Jinnah’s Residency, as it was called, in Ziarat, about 74 miles from Quetta. They used rockets and hand grenades, officials said, and a guard was killed. Explosions caused a fire that quickly engulfed the two-story building. The facade was made of timber and was turned to ashes. A charred bricked structure remained barely intact; television images showed the smoldering remains. The Baluch Liberation Army, a militant separatist group that is fighting for the independence of Baluchistan Province, a mineral-rich region in southwestern Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr. Khan, the interior minister, was quoted by the local news media as saying that the attackers replaced the country’s national flag at the building with the Baluch Liberation Army’s banner. “In a way, it is an attack on the very symbol of Pakistan, the man who created Pakistan,” said Ejaz Haider, the editor for national security affairs at Capital TV, an Islamabad-based television network, and one of the country’s most widely read columnists. Mr. Haider compared the assault on the building to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Those attacks were against the very symbols and values of the United States,” he said. “In a way, this attack is the same thing.” It occurred just days after the installation of nationalist provincial government by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. “The expectation was that with a new nationalist government, other secessionists’ groups could be brought in,” Mr. Haider said. “With this attack, at least the Baluchistan Liberation Army has said that we reject the very basis of Pakistan.” Raza Rumi, a columnist and talk show host, said, “This is a hugely symbolic attack at the very idea of Pakistan that Baluch separatists are refusing to accept and struggling to undo.” “Baluch nationalists and separatists hold Jinnah responsible for actions against their territory,” Mr. Rumi said. “After the attack, in some of the early reactions on social media, Baluch separatists portrayed the attack as a revenge for historical wrongs.” In 1948, Mr. Jinnah sent army troops into Baluchistan to subdue Baluch leaders who were resisting being incorporated into the new state of Pakistan. The Ziarat district is famous as a tourist destination, but the Jinnah Residency was its most notable attraction. Mr. Jinnah spent time there while trying to recover from tuberculosis. He died in September 1948. “The building was initially built as a sanitarium, and it was appropriated by the deputy commissioner in the 1930s,” said Salman Rashid, a prominent travel writer. “The building was not very important till Jinnah went and lived there in 1948. It was symbolic of Jinnah’s physical connection to Pakistan.” Mr. Rashid said he had visited the place several times. “Architecturally, it was very humble sort of a building, designed by a military engineer and made of Juniper timber,” he said. “It was maintained just as it was in 1948 when Jinnah left.”