PAKISTANI SECURITY forces were on high alert last night after an audacious 22-hour assault on their military headquarters that heightened western fears about threats to Pakistan’s stability.
Paramilitary rangers guarded entry points to Islamabad and jet fighters bombed Taliban hideouts in the tribal belt following the “swarm” attack on the headquarters in central Rawalpindi, a garrison city 16 kilometres (10 miles) from Islamabad.
Ten men disguised as soldiers carried out the raid on Saturday, killing a number of soldiers. Five of the militants died, while the remainder held 45 hostages over the weekend. At 6am yesterday a barrage of explosions and gunfire rang out across Rawalpindi as commandos attacked the besieged building.
Three hostages, two of them civilians, and two soldiers were killed. Four of the remaining five militants were killed, and the army later released blurry photos of their faces. An army spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, said 20 of the hostages were kept in a room guarded by a militant wearing a suicide vest who was shot dead before he could detonate the explosives. Security officials named the surviving militant as Dr Usman, and said he was suspected of orchestrating last March’s gun attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the assault showed militants were “increasingly threatening the authority of the state” in Pakistan. But, she added, “we see no evidence they were going to take over the state”.
It was the third spectacular attack of the week. On Monday a suicide attacker disguised as a soldier killed five staff in a UN building, while on Friday a bomb in central Peshawar killed 53 people.
The assault on the military headquarters, known as GHQ, was seen as a pre-emptive strike against a planned military operation on the Taliban stronghold of south Waziristan. The black-turbaned militants have vowed to avenge the death of their leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike in August. As Pakistani planes bombed Taliban positions in south Waziristan last night, killing at least 10 people, the interior minister, Rehman Malik, said an offensive was “inevitable”. “We are going to come heavy on you,” he warned.
But analysts said the GHQ assault bore the hallmark of militants from Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, which has increasingly become a focus of militancy concerns.
In recent years Taliban and Punjab fighters have co-operated closely, raising the spectre of a nationwide network of extremists. The captured ringleader from the weekend raid, Dr Usman, is reportedly a member of Lashkar I Jhangvi, a vicious Punjab-based sectarian outfit that has developed ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Imtiaz Gul, author of a recent book on militancy in Pakistan, said it underscored the need to take the fight to the Punjab. “There is a dire and urgent need to go to the core of these militant groups, whether based in Bahawalpur [in the Punjab] or Waziristan, before they can spring any more surprises on the security forces,” he said. – (Guardian service)