Terrorism Abounds in Pakistan

Rescue workers transport one of the many injured victims of the bomb explosion at a mosque in Islamabad on Friday. (M.A. Sheikh/The Associated Press)

 

"By the time I reached it there had already been an explosion."

"Bodies were lying everywhere, some were missing arms, some missing legs."

"We took the most injured in our own vehicle [to hospital]." 

Mosque caretaker Syed Ashfaq  

"The morning of February 6, a suicide bomber attacked a Shia mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan. The attack risks worsening regional instability amid a deteriorating security situation in Pakistan. Early reports suggest the attack was carried out by a single actor, who opened fire at security personnel outside a mosque before entering and detonating a suicide vest. In an official statement, Islamabad’s deputy commissioner announced that 31 people had been killed, with another 169 people hospitalized locally, but the death toll is likely to rise."

"No group has yet claimed the attack. Pakistan is home to an enormous variety of terrorist organizations: U.S. officials have identified at least 15 groups, while the Indian nonprofit South Asian Terrorism Portal has listed 44 terrorist organizations operating in the country. Most terrorist violence in Pakistan is associated with three actors: the Islamic State, Baloch militants, and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The most likely perpetrator appears to be the Islamic State–⁠Khorasan Province (IS-KP), which operates both in Afghanistan and Pakistan but has a significant interest in mass-casualty international attacks. The group has been implicated in a variety of recent international attacks and plots, including mass-casualty attacks against Crocus City Hall in Moscow and a memorial for Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Tehran, and plots against the Paris Olympics, cathedrals in Cologne and Vienna, and protests outside of the Swedish parliament."

Center for Strategic and International Studies  

"[India -- Pakistan's eastern neighbour was] assisting the Taliban regime and threatening not only Pakistan but regional and global peace."

"[Pakistan takes strong exception to the situation in Afghanistan where the Taliban regime has created conditions similar to or worse than pre-9/11, when terror organizations posed threats to global peace." 

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari

Photo: Aamir QURESHI / AFP via Getty Images

 

Tension between Pakistan and the Taliban government next door are high, as Pakistan accuses the Afghan Taliban of supporting Pakistan's own Taliban. How things have changed; before and during the U.S.-led, UN-approved invasion of Afghanistan by NATO forces following the 9/11 atrocities in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania it was Pakistan  through its military and its Inter-agency Intelligence group that supported and gave haven to the Afghan Taliban, at the very time that it declared itself in league with the U.S. in combating terrorism.

 

Afghanistan was invaded by the combined Western forces led by the U.S. because the-then-governing Taliban was sheltering al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden, known to have been the mastermind of 9/11, a 20-year conflict was launched when the U.S. sought the elusive al-Qaeda leader in the mountains of Afghanistan. It was, in fact, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at a secret compound, where U.S. Navy Seal commandos found bin Laden and killed him.

 

That compound was not far from a Pakistan army base. It was clear that Pakistan's military knew of the presence of the secretive head of al-Qaeda and likely facilitated his stay there. Next to the compound lived a Pakistani medical doctor who suspected that his neighbour was the infamous bin Laden, and in the belief that his country was in league with the U.S. to discover his whereabouts, he confirmed to the U.S. that the man whose suspicious presence was thought to be bin Laden, really was.

 

For his efforts, Shakil Afridi, the Pakistan physician who had been so helpful to the U.S. was later arrested, charged and convicted in a Pakistan court of treason, and sentenced to 33 years in prison. So much for Pakistan's double game of supporting the war on terrorism while enabling it and giving haven to its leaders. It's fairly rich that now, the country overrun with terrorist groups, portrays itself as an innocent victim. 

 

Thousands gathered in Islamabad to mourn the 32 victims of Friday's attack   Reuters

 

Pakistan accuses India of planning terrorist attacks on Pakistan's soil, but it was a Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar e-Taiba that conducted a 2008 attack on India's financial hub in Mumbai. A dozen coordinated attacks took place over a period of three days of chaos and violence. Fire, grenade attacks and gunfire took its terror-toll of over $1-billion in damage. No fewer than 166 innocent people died in that series of attacks, with some 300 people wounded. India has much to blame Pakistan for; not the other way around.

 

Last Friday's suicide bombing that took place at a Shiite mosque killing 31 worshippers and wounding 169 was the work of Pakistan's own Islamic State terrorist group, which in fact claimed the glory for the gore it had created. The assertion by Pakistan that terrorism cannot be confronted by any single country in isolation, arrived after global reaction condemning the attack, but Pakistan's role in aiding and abetting terrorists that prey on other countries reveals them for the hypocrites that they are.

 

The government in Afghanistan responded to the claims from Pakistan by proclaiming its innocence in the affair. Its focus is on terrifying its own population, which apparently takes up all its energies, particularly addicted to characterizing women as somewhat subhuman whose role is to complement male desires and to produce following generations, with no self-agency, no rights, no access to education or personal fulfillment. 

 

Police commandos take positions at the site of a bomb explosion at a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, on Friday. (Anjum Naveed/The Associated Press)

 

Both New Delhi and Afghanistan's Defence Ministry separately rejected the allegation of the Pakistan government, decrying Islamabad's irresponsibility. The Taliban in Afghanistan, returned to government with the withdrawal of U.S. forces and its allies in 2011, has continued its persecution of its  population and is itself the locus of the presence of other terrorist groups, including ISIS. The Pakistani Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, has also denied any link to the mosque bombing. 

 

Pakistan's security forces arrested four suspects, among them an Afghan national accused of links to the IS group in Afghanistan, said to have assisted in masterminding the attack. The bomber's mother and brother-in-law have evidently also been detained, with the investigation ongoing. 

 

What Goes Around Comes Around

"Panic spread among the worshippers when the firing started. I ran to save my life."

"Suddenly a man came in and started firing... He shot many people [and] then closed his eyes and blew himself up."

"After that, I have no idea what happened."

Hospitalized Pakistani worshipper at Shi'ite Peshawar mosque

Soldiers inspect the mosque after Friday's bomb blast in Peshawar. (Abdul Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

 

The death toll of 58 Shi'ite worshippers last Friday at a Peshawar mosque is likely to rise, according to police, given that among the 194 that had been wounded in the attack, many were in critical condition. The suicidal attacker is among the dead. It had not immediately been confirmed who was responsible for the attack. The Pakistani Taliban claim they were not involved, and initially no other group had come forward to boast of the attack.

Pakistan's Shi'ites have long been under threat by the Sunni majority, targeted by Muslim Islamist militants; Islamic State and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. In a sense, this deadly sectarian conflict can be laid at the responsibility of Saudi Arabia whose Wahhabist sect of puritanical Islam, dating back centuries and more recently renewed, was spread, courtesy of Saudi oil money that enabled the building of madrasas built everywhere in the Muslim world and beyond.

Students attending such schools are taught the fundamentals of 'pure' Islam, in which the concept of violent jihad is considered one of the pillars of Islam, an obligation of all true faithful of Islam to engage. One of the better-known, modern day illuminati of the Wahhabist school of Islamism none other than Osama bin Laden. The targeted mosque was the sole place of worship for Pakistani Shi'ites in the old city of Peshawar.

"We are in a state of emergency and the injured are being shifted to the hospital", disclosed police officer Mohammad Sajjan Khan. Wahhabist Islam considers Shi'ism to be false Islam and those who practise it, no more and no less practising apostasy. Jihad is directed to destroy their lives since they are regarded as opponents not supporters of Islam. 

 

An armed assassin arrived at the mosque on a motorcycle. He fired at police when he was stopped, then forced his way into the mosque hall crowded with the faithful, began firing, and finally detonated his suicide vest. Prior to entering the mosque the attacker shot at police guards standing at the entrance to the mosque, killing one. Police had the impression there were two men involved, initially. 

 

An injured man sits on a stretcher in Peshawar, after a bomb blast in a mosque during Friday prayers. (Khuram Parvez/Reuters)

There is deadly irony in this situation in Pakistan. While ostensibly a partner in the global war against terrorism, Pakistan's Inter-Intelligence Agency trained and armed the Afghan Taliban which found haven inside Pakistan's mountainous regions bordering Afghanistan following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to roust Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda whom the Taliban were sheltering in Afghanistan. 

 

Bin Laden himself was eventually domiciled in Abbottabad, Pakistan, his compound located near a Pakistani military garrison, where US special forces eventually caught up with him.

And while surreptitiously Pakistan, through its military was aiding and abetting the Afghan Taliban, in their own Islamist mountain tribal communities their own Taliban sprang up. The Pakistani Taliban became a threat the government of Pakistan had to reckon with, and still attempts to clamp down on. Although a unit of Islamic State eventually claimed it was involved in the suicide attack, it is entirely likely it was indeed the work of the Pakistani Taliban.

With the ascension to power in Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban have emboldened the activities of the Pakistani Taliban. And they have launched attacks into Pakistan from the safe haven that Afghanistan has now become for them, despite that the Afghan Taliban had publicly vowed that the country they once again govern will never become a launching pad for terrorist attacks against their neighbours. 

 

Which was precisely what Pakistan had been from 2001 forward. Now, is is the government of Pakistan that has appealed to the governing Afghan Taliban to hand over any Pakistani Taliban on their soil who launch attacks into Pakistan. So far, none have been.

Rescue workers and volunteers gather at the site of bomb explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan, Friday, March 4, 2022. A powerful bomb exploded inside a Shiite Muslim mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar on Friday, killing more than 30 worshippers and wounding dozens more, many of them critically, police said. (AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)