ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BOMB IN PAKISTAN
For Pakistan, The Deluge Is Here
Posted 10/12/2009 07:36 PM ET
Terrorism: Another day, another bomb rips Pakistan. But the recent attacks aren’t random acts of violence. They’re direct confrontations with Pakistan’s military. As the West dithers, this is starting to look like war.
Taliban attacks in Pakistan have increased in frequency and intensity, which ought to worry the region. On Monday alone, they blew up a Pakistani military convoy passing through the Swat Valley bazaar of Alpuri, killing 41 troops and civilians and leaving 48 injured.
The attack came just as Pakistan had declared successful a military push to get rid of the terrorists. It wasn’t.
Two days earlier came a more disturbing attack. The Taliban launched an unprecedented hit on Pakistan’s military headquarters, taking hundreds hostage in a 22-hour siege that left 23 dead.
The attackers weren’t the usual ragtag Pathan tribal fighters, but terrorists from a new region, Pushtu, a sign that the Taliban are winning recruits in a region with long ties to the Pakistani military.
Attacks on the Pakistani military now outnumber any other kind there. Recent wire reports tote up the damage:
• On March 30, the Taliban attacked a police training center in Lahore, killing eight.
• On April 15, a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a security post, killing nine police recruits.
• On April 18, a suicide car bomber rammed a military convoy, killing 25 soldiers and police and two others near Kohat.
• On May 27, gunmen attacked police and intelligence offices in Lahore, setting off a car bomb that killed 30 and wounded 250.
• On Aug. 27, another suicide bomber killed 22 Pakistani border guards in an attack on the main crossing point into Afghanistan.
• On Oct. 5, a gunman dressed in a military uniform attacked a United Nations outpost, killing five.
• On Oct. 9, a suicide attack killed 49 and wounded 100 in Peshawar.
Get the picture? With the time dividing each attack growing shorter, there’s only one way to look at this: as a terror war strengthening and evolving into its next stage — a full-blown war on the state.
It’s the sort of downhill mudslide that nearly destroyed Colombia in 1998 as FARC terrorists strengthened, took on the Colombian army directly and encircled the capital of Bogota with superior firepower. The same thing will happen to Pakistan if the deteriorating situation is not confronted directly.
It makes the months of Washington’s dithering on Afghanistan resemble gasoline on this fire. The administration is still contemplating what its strategy will be in Afghanistan, still wondering about whether to take its general’s recommendations and still contemplating whether to send additional troops and resources.
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