PAKISTAN WAS reeling last night from a spree of militant violence that plunged its cultural capital into chaos and demonstrated the bloody resolve of Taliban extremists vowing to overthrow the state.
Teams of gunmen, several disguised as police officers and wearing suicide vests, attacked three police facilities across Lahore, leaving 28 people dead, 19 of them police.
Two of the targets, a police headquarters and a police training centre, had already been attacked in the past 18 months.
Violence also rocked North-West Frontier province, where a suicide bomber in Kohat destroyed a police station, killing 11 people, and a smaller bomb in Peshawar wounded five.
The day’s death toll was by no means the worst Pakistan has seen in recent years. Yet the relentlessness of the onslaught – following attacks on a UN office on October 6th and the army headquarters in Rawalpindi last weekend – rattled nerves.
“The enemy has started a guerrilla war,” declared Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik.
In Lahore, Muhammad Yusuf told how he dived for shelter inside his tea shop when explosions and gunfire shattered the morning tranquillity. “I was just praying that God would protect me – and that it would all be over soon,” he said, reflecting wider sentiment across the country.
The bloodshed in Lahore started just after 9am when a gunman burst into the provincial headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency, triggering a 90-minute gun battle that left six people dead. Police killed him before he could detonate his explosives.
A second group of three or four attackers struck the Munawan police training centre on the city outskirts, killing 11 police. Police shot one gunman, while the others exploded their suicide vests.
Meanwhile, a third group was scaling the walls of the Elite Police training school near the airport. Police said they killed two attackers but three ran into a residential area, where they attempted to take hostages.
Terrified families locked themselves into their homes, forcing the gunmen on to the rooftops, where one was killed by sniper fire and two detonated their explosives.
As forensic teams combed the areas afterwards, officers from the anti-terrorism squad patrolled the streets outside.
The Taliban offensives – five major attacks in 11 days – are thought to have been triggered by army plans to assault the militants’ stronghold of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.
Last weekend’s siege of the army headquarters was plotted in Waziristan, according to the military. A reported 28,000 soldiers are preparing to take on 10,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
The fact that the Taliban can strike pre-emptively in the heart of Punjab, Pakistan’s wealthiest and most powerful province, is causing concern. Boundaries between different extremist groups are becoming blurred, said Dr Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a Lahore-based military expert.
“They are working together to challenge the Pakistani state. They want the war to be fought in the cities rather than allowing the state to take it to Waziristan,” he said.
As well as the violence, Pakistan is struggling with a crippled economy, while its civil and military leaders are emerging from a bruising confrontation over a $7.5 billion (€5 billion) US aid plan. The army said the Kerry-Lugar Bill, as it is known, imposed unfair conditions. After agreeing some symbolic compromises, US president Barack Obama signed the Bill into law yesterday.
Questions have also been asked about why Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agencies failed to prevent yesterday’s attacks. An official with the Punjab government told the Associated Press they had precise information about expected attacks but authorities had failed to act.
Pakistan’s fight against militancy has strong ideological as well as security dimensions.
On Monday, a Lahore court freed Hafiz Saeed, head of Lashkar e Taiba, an extremist group with historical ties to Pakistani intelligence, and which is accused of orchestrating the Mumbai attacks last November.
Dr Askari-Rizvi said the militants were unlikely to succeed in collapsing the government.
But, he warned, “if these things keep happening there will be a major crisis of confidence in the government. There is a sense of insecurity across Pakistan. You don’t know what will happen when you are walking on the streets.”
– (Guardian service)