Pakistan Bombings Not Sectarian

"This is a calculated attempt on security officials by anti-Pakistan elements, which are challenging the writ of the government," Sherpao said.

"The suicide bombings have nothing to do with the sectarianism," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told a news conference on Monday, January 29.

"This is a calculated attempt on security officials by anti-Pakistan elements, which are challenging the writ of the government," he said, adding the government would not kowtow to the nefarious designs of terrorists.

Intelligence officials told IslamOnline.net that angry tribal youths, loyal to militant leader Baitullah Mahsud, were involved in the recent attacks.

They believe the attacks were a backlash of US and Pakistani strikes on the country's northern tribal belt, where hundreds of youths had registered themselves as future suicide bombers after 82 tribesmen were killed in a recent strike.

A policeman was killed and several others were injured Monday in Dera Ismaeel Kahn, which borders the troubled tribal area of Wana, after a 16-year-old blew himself up near a police check post.

On Saturday, a young suicide bomber killed 16 people, including the head of Peshawar police, in an attack on a police checkpoint.

This came a few hours after an attack on Marriot Hotel in the high security zone of the capital Islamabad on Friday.

According to hotel management, some 56 American and British nationals were in the hotel at the time of suicide attack.

Intelligence officials said investigators are examining a link between the bombings and a Taliban statement that hundreds of suicide bombers were ready to attack.

Dear Price  

The recent attacks targeted police forces or foreign nationals. (Reuters)

Security experts say the latest bombings indicate a shift in the strategy of militants in line with Iraq and Afghanistan, where suicide bombers target US and allied troops and military installations.

"We should get ready for more suicide attacks as tribesmen cannot survive without retaliation," Ikram Sehgal, a senior defense and security analyst, told IOL.

He believes Pakistan is paying the price of war on terror.

"I am one hundred percent sure that the recent suicide attacks are the result of US and Pakistani air strikes on tribal areas," argued the expert.

"Before attacking these tribesmen, one must keep this in mind that they will retaliate. Therefore, what is happing now, is unavoidable."

Professor Shamim Akhtar, a security analyst and former head of Karachi University's International Relations Department, agreed.

"Pakistan is fighting and crushing Taliban not in its own interest, but it is fighting the America's war. Taliban have never been Pakistan's enemy," he told IOL.

"The tribesmen have become so desperate and angry as they have started vigorous attacks on security forces," added Akhtar.

"In my opinion, tribesmen have decided that if they have to be targeted and killed in any case, then why die alone.

"The US and Pakistani governments must keep in mind that these tribesmen do not forget the revenge for 100 years."

Some 42 army recruits were killed in a suicide attack on an army training center in Dargai area of the north western frontier province (NWFP), just a few days after an army air strike on a religious seminary in Bajur tribal area that killed 82 civilians.

"It is high time for the government to think that its policy to blindly follow the US directives has risked the lives of its own citizens and security officials," Qazi Hussein Ahmed, President of the six-party religious alliance, Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), told a news conference.

"A situation in which the people of Pakistan and the armed forces are at logger heads, perfectly suits America."

General Hameed Gul, a former head of Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), concurred.

"Pakistan has been trapped in a very dangerous position, where its forces are killing their own people, and in retaliation our own security personnel are being killed," he told reporters.

"The claims often made by our government that America cannot achieve anything in its war on terror without Pakistan's cooperation, compel the people who are fighting US occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan to consider Pakistan an enemy country."

Talks

Sehgal sees negotiations and a peace agreement as the only way to tackle the situation.

He cited a peace agreement signed between local Taliban and the Pakistani government last September in North Waziristan, which was opposed by the US.

"Pakistan had wanted to abide by the agreement. It was the US that sabotaged that and forced Pakistani forces to bomb the tribesmen despite the agreement," said Professor Akhtar.

"This is a political and economic issue, and must be dealt accordingly," said Sehgal.

"If you provide them political freedom, and means of livelihood, the issue will automatically be resolved."

Pakistan's tribal areas are still being dealt with under a British law whereby a political agent is the representative of the federal government who unofficially acts like a viceroy.

Residents of these tribal areas have no right to challenge the decisions of the political agent in any court of law.