Third Major Strike in Lahore

In a daring attack, Taliban suicide squad on May 27, 2009 targeted Pakistan’s powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), detonating an explosives-laden car outside its fortified provincial headquarters here that left at least 35 people dead, seven of them personnel of the spy agency, and nearly 400 injured. The site is also close to the Lahore High Court where Jamat-ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, detained in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack, was scheduled to appear for a hearing.

Up to five heavily-armed militants, who struck early this morning, failed to reach the main premises and rammed their Toyota vehicle into the barriers on the road leading to the buildings housing ISI and Lahore Police Rescue offices.

The terrorist hit squad first headed their car towards the two buildings located just off the crowded Mall Road in Civil Lines, but as heavily armed guards prevented them, they came out and exchanged fire and then set off a massive blast, which some witnesses equated with an earthquake.

Third Major Strike
This was the third major strike to rock the city in less than three months following the audacious March 3 attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team that killed seven persons and injured six players and the March 30 raid on the Manawan Police Academy that left 10 people dead.

The attack was a bid to free Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s ideological guru Hafiz Sayeed, who was to be produced in court nearby around the time the terrorists struck. His escape was to have been effected in the confusion. Those who believe this seek to link the Lahore atrocity directly to the November 26 attack on Mumbai last year by LeT. The implied suggestion is that Pakistan is serious about nailing the Mumbai attackers and is paying the price for it.

Handiwork of Taliban
The incident appears to be the handiwork of the Taliban or a terrorist network aligned with it in retaliation for the anti-Taliban Army action in the Swat region. The Pakistan Army claims to have cleared most parts of Malakand division, including Swat, of the Taliban presence. Pakistan, which created the Taliban in the nineties as part of its larger goal of acquiring strategic depth in Afghanistan, in under pressure from the international community, particularly the US, to continue the anti-Taliban drive till the scourge is wiped out.

The monster is getting out of hand and now aims to capture the Pakistani nation. It can aspire high because it has a crucial band of support inside the country’s security establishment. Unfortunately, it is the people who pay the price. Indeed, it is this which is common to the understanding of terrorism in India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the Pakistani state cares, it has not shown sufficient signs of it.

Pakistan will have to uproot the militant jihadi culture, wind up the training camps and habitats of the off-shoots of the Taliban and other extremist groups if it is serious about fighting terrorism to the finish. It will have to destroy all the terrorist networks to win the battle against the enemies of peace.