Pakistan’s 9/11

ISLAMABAD—Militants launched simul­ta­ne­ous attacks across Pak­istan Thurs­day morn­ing, hit­ting at least three police instal­la­tions in Lahore, ram­ming a sui­cide car bomb into a police sta­tion in Kohat in the NWFP and attack­ing a school in Peshawar. At least 37 peo­ple were killed in the com­bined attacks.

The scene in Lahore was one of may­hem, where the Fed­eral Inves­ti­ga­tion Agency, an Elite Police train­ing cen­ter and the Man­awan police acad­emy were attacked by gunmen.

Four mil­i­tants attacked the FIA killing seven peo­ple. Two gun­men, four gov­ern­ment employ­ees and one bystander were killed. One of the attack­ers was report­edly cap­tured. The attack­ers pos­si­bly took five peo­ple hostage, includ­ing chil­dren. A sui­cide car bomb attacked this same build­ing in March last year, killing 21 people.

At the Man­awan Police Acad­emy, which was tar­geted ear­lier this year by mil­i­tants, eight to 10 gun­men stormed the com­pound killing up to six police­men. Sev­eral mil­i­tants were killed in that attack and there are reports some blew them­selves up.

And at the Elite Police train­ing cen­ter, three female mil­i­tants were among 10 attack­ers. Two have been report­edly been killed along with a police offi­cial. There are reports of con­tin­u­ing explo­sions and an ongo­ing fire­fight and Pak­istani secu­rity forces appear ready to storm the center.

Pak­istani Rangers and Army troops have been called in to tackle the attacks, and police offi­cials say the FIA build­ing and Man­awan police acad­emy have been cleared. But the num­ber of casu­al­ties is likely to rise.

Mean­while, in Kohat, about 100 miles west of Islam­abad in the north­west of the coun­try, a sui­cide car bomber rammed a police sta­tion killing 10 peo­ple, includ­ing a num­ber of civilians.

In Peshawar, the cap­i­tal of the North­west Fron­tier Province, a bomb exploded in a school, killing an 8-year-old boy and injur­ing eight civil­ians. The blast was in a res­i­den­tial area for gov­ern­ment bureau­crats and employees.

“The enemy has started a guer­rilla war,” said Inte­rior Min­is­ter Rehman Malik. “The whole nation should be united against these hand­ful of ter­ror­ists, and God will­ing we will defeat them.”

The use of women as attack­ers is a marked depar­ture for the Pak­istani Tal­iban, and along with the auda­cious attacks in the last 11 days marks a seri­ous esca­la­tion of the mil­i­tants’ cam­paign against the Pak­istani state. Many ana­lysts believe the attacks are an attempt to dis­suade the Pak­istani Army from its long rumored assault on South Waziristan.

The Army has massed 28,000 troops and attempted to seal off the moun­tain­ous tribal region where approx­i­mately 10,000 tribal mil­i­tants, and al Qaeda and other for­eign fight­ers have report­edly taken refuge.

The Pak­istani Tal­iban have repeat­edly warned the Army and the gov­ern­ment not to attack South Waziris­tan and indeed the attacks have climbed in fre­quency, feroc­ity and sophis­ti­ca­tion. From a sui­cide bomb­ing against the World Food Pro­gram in Islam­abad last week to a coor­di­nated attack on the Army’s Gen­eral Head­quar­ters in Rawalpindi and now to a series of simul­ta­ne­ous attacks across the coun­try, it’s clear the Pak­istani Tal­iban have regrouped fol­low­ing the death of TTP leader Bait­ul­lah Mehsud in August.

These attacks are meant to send sev­eral messages:

1. That the coun­try is falling into anar­chy, which could limit sup­port for a wide-ranging offen­sive in South Waziris­tan. If the pop­u­la­tion thinks the coun­try is about to go up in flames, they’ll be much less likely to sup­port a broad cam­paign that would both fan the fire and take troops away from areas that might be bet­ter defended.
2. The mil­i­tants are attempt­ing to sap the resolve of the state, by show­ing that their oper­a­tional capac­ity has not been hin­dered by the ongo­ing oper­a­tions in Swat and the tribal agencies.
3. Finally, the attacks in Lahore, the heart of Pun­jab, are to show the pub­lic that no place in Pak­istan is safe. Many Pak­ista­nis con­tinue to believe the Tal­iban and mil­i­tant attacks are con­fined to the Pash­tun regions on the far side of the Indus River. Attacks like this show that this not the case.