Islamabad is growing increasingly edgy as it braces itself for further terrorist attacks, writes MARY FITZGERALD
IF YOU were to compile a list of the most secure premises in Islamabad, the World Food Programme (WFP) headquarters would definitely be near the top. Located in a leafy residential neighbourhood favoured by several prominent Pakistanis and diplomats, the fortress-like compound is just a short walk away from President Asif Ali Zardari’s private home.
After the truck bomb attack that killed more than 50 people at Islamabad’s Marriott hotel last year, the UN food agency barricaded its offices against vehicle-borne bombs by building a several-storey high wall of Hesco barriers – fabric-lined mesh containers filled with sand – around the compound perimeter.
Visitors have to pass through a barricade and metal scanners – par for the course in most hotels, restaurants and offices in Islamabad these days – to gain entry.
The fact then that a suicide bomber was able to penetrate such stringent security and carry out an attack inside the compound that killed five and injured many more WFP personnel yesterday has sent shockwaves through the community of international agencies and development organisations based in Pakistan.
“This is the first time the humanitarian community has been targeted in such an obvious way,” says Paul Healy, Trócaire’s Pakistan country director.
“Living and working here is a risk in itself but this has really shocked people. It’s not going to stop us from doing our work but it certainly makes us ask questions about the way forward.”
Like several other NGOs in Islamabad, Trócaire was reassessing its security procedures in the wake of yesterday’s attack.
The WFP has been providing food to many of those displaced by fighting between militants and the Pakistani army in the Swat valley and other pockets of northwestern Pakistan. Trócaire and Concern have also been involved in the relief efforts.
The latter’s Pakistan country director, Dorothy Blane, believes yesterday’s bombing will have a very serious affect on the way NGOs operate in the country.
“We are still not entirely clear what happened at WFP but it indicates yet again that, like the Marriott, the incredible level of security we have to live with daily can be relatively easily cracked . . . to plagiarise the famous IRA line, ‘the militants only have to be lucky once’.”
Blane notes some agencies have already sent home expat families and non-essential staff, and those who remain find meetings in volatile areas are often cancelled at short notice for security reasons.
“For a country that recently had the largest IDP crisis since Rwanda, and still has probably a million IDPs, and needs lots of help both to deal with the displaced and resettle the ‘areas of return’, the capacity to get assistance from the international humanitarian actors is fast being eroded,” she says.
Islamabad, once south Asia’s sleepiest city with its neatly planned streets and population of bureaucrats and diplomats, has become increasingly tense in recent years as Pakistan’s struggle with militancy edged ever closer before striking at its heart with a series of deadly attacks.
The city’s residents veer from jitteriness to a nonchalance that one Islamabad resident yesterday compared to the “boiling frog” syndrome – a metaphor for the inability of people to react to important changes that occur gradually.
On my last visit in July, I noted that the menu at a trendy new café in Kohsar market, an area many consider a likely target given its popularity with wealthy Pakistanis and expats, informs customers that the windows have been fitted with shatter-proof glass.
The risk of attack didn’t appear to deter the glamorous former government minister sharing a nearby table with her friend.
Yesterday’s bombing is the first in Islamabad since the army moved on Swat’s home-grown Taliban in May.
The truth is no one expects it will be the last.