Yesterday’s suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, could prove to be an important moment in Pakistan’s struggle with its own extremists. The bombing—which apparently involved 100kg of explosives aimed at the local ISI headquarters and killed at least 40 people—was conducted by the so-called Tehrik-e Taliban Punjab (TTP) as retaliation for the Pakistan military’s operations in Swat. They may also have been trying to free Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, leader of the Lashkar-e Taiba that was responsible for the Mumbai bombing last year—some reports claim that he and possibly other terrorists, linked to the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in March, were in the building when the bomb detonated.
The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, led by Beitullah Mehsud and generally thought responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, also claimed responsibility for the attack. The two claims are compatible, since the Punjabi Taliban recognizes Beitullah Mehsud’s overall leadership and its own alliance with his TTP. What matters is that it seems clear that it was Punjabi terrorists who conducted this attack in the heart of Punjab itself.
Hitherto, although experts have known of the prevalence of indigenous terror groups in Punjab and Sindh, most discussions about Pakistan’s militants have focused on Pashtun groups along the Durand Line demarcating the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Pakistani government has generally tried to insist that such groups are the ones responsible for disturbances, calling loudly (and oddly) for Afghanistan to close the border to contain the Pashtuns (though they are Pakistani). Although some senior Pakistani officials remain keen to deny the existence of a Punjabi threat, President Asif Ali Zardari seems more serious. He has formed a new cabinet-level national security committee to review Pakistan’s security situation and called for the recruitment of at least 100,000 more Pakistani police. If this marks the beginning of Islamabad’s recognition of the depth of Pakistan’s problems and Zardari’s own commitment to see the struggle through, then the United States might have a real opportunity here, if we can take advantage of it.
Check out our analysis of the bombing and more at AEI’s new Critical Threats Project site.