Rawalpindi « The Modern Rumi

‘Pindi’, as the locals call it, is an eyesore of dusty open markets and army cantonments right outside Islamabad, and her picture-perfect Margala Hills. My fondest memory of travelling there was the day my cousins picked me up from the airport for a wedding in nearby army town of Wah.

As we sped through Pindi sometime after dawn, I looked around, and to my astonishment, “Holy s***t, where’s the army?” ”The what?” my cousin asked drearily. “The army, isn’t this a cantonment (army base) town? This is your Pentagon…” My cousin seemed alarmed at my strange fascination at where exactly the army was. “Hamza,” he said calmly, “they’re at the border.” “With Afghanistan?” I asked, with my American naïveté. ”No, with India. They’re the problem.”

That was 2003.

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It turns out India really wasn’t that much of a problem. After a lot wrangling and persuasion by the United States, Pakistan’s army finally moved off the border with India earlier this year, and sent its regulars into the treacherous Pashtun regions in the northwest of the country.

That has had some serious implicatications for Rawalpindi.

Most of Pindi’s leading families are army people. The city houses the Army GHQ, where the powerful military’s leadership holds court. This isn’t exactly PPP territory, and in fact Benazir Bhutto was assassinated here two years ago, some whisper with military support.

Whatever the reality of such rumors, one would think security would air-tight around Pakistan’s Pentagon. That hasn’t been the case. In October, terrorists stormed the Army’s offices here (the federal government blocked live coverage). That was barely weeks after another grizzly suicide attack on students at Islamabad’s Islamic University.

Today, Pakistan’s terrorists grew bolder, targeting a mosque not too far, again, from GHQ. At least 17 children were amongst the 35 dead, and it is believed at least four terrorists were involved before security forces arrived, and two of the perpetrators blew themselves up.

There are several things to point out about what is happening on the ground in Pakistan. First, there have been literally no attacks outside of the Punjab. Karachi, the country’s largest city (and traditional hub of sectarian violence) hasn’t seen anything major in terms of bombings or terrorist attacks in nearly two years. Second, most of the terror attacks we’ve seen focus on institutions where elitism is obvious; namely civil service and military installations. Third, there is a serious sophistication to these operations, beyond the capabilities of the Taliban’s fighting forces. Fourth and probably most telling: none of these attacks were carried out by outsiders: the terrorists were homegrown. And, in many cases they were Punjabis, not the ethnic Pashtun who make up the Taliban.

However, the Taliban continue to claim credit, although belatedly and only after the media makes contact with them, not the other way around. The same was true this time, with the BBC reporting almost as an afterthought that the Taliban had “later” claimed ownership of the attack. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (well, really the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, but whatever). Again, we haven’t seen particularly sophisticated insurgent attacks by Taliban cells in Wazirstan. The Pakistani Army is currently engaged there, fighting the Taliban, whose battle plans seem to mimic those of ‘conventional’ (if you can ever call it that) rebel-insurgents.

My thoughts at this time are that some other force (no, Pakistani conspiracy theorists, not India/Israel/America/Russia/Michael Jackson) is behind the series of terror attacks. In upcoming posts, I will begin to investigate more deeply whether or not this hypothesis is correct. And if so, I’ll present who I think are the most (and least) likely suspects behind the slew of terror attacks in Pakistan