It may seem macabre to find any silver lining in the clouds that lour over in Pakistan these days. These include not only the bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad, which killed some 60 people, but now the news that Afghanistan’s consul general in Peshawar has been kidnapped and his driver killed. In response to the evident lack of security even in the supposedly safe areas of Pakistan, British Airways has suspended all flights to that country. The Pakistani rupi has fallen more than 20% against the dollar this year, and the danger grows of clashes between U.S. and Pakistani troops.
It is obviously bad news that Islamic militants are able to strike in the heart of Pakistan’s capital. But it is perhaps mildly encouraging that they feel compelled to do so. Note that, until the Marriott bombing, there had been precious few terrorist attacks outside of Pakistan’s tribal areas this year after a surge of atrocities last year. The apparent cause for the decline of terrorism was a series of deals struck between Pakistan’s government and the militants which allowed them to operate virtually unfettered in the tribal areas and to carry out their jihad in Afghanistan so long as they left Pakistan’s urban areas alone.
Those deals led to a surge of violence in Afghanistan, and the new government of Pakistan led by President Asif Ali Zardari seems to recognize that this state of affairs is no longer tenable. The Pakistani army has launched a fresh offensive against militants in Bajaur agency while the U.S. has stepped up its cross-border attacks on Pakistani-based militants. All of that is increasing the pressure on the extremists, and helps to explain why they are lashing out in Islamabad.
It is far too soon to know how things will work out. It is quite possible, even probable, that Islamabad’s zeal for anti-terror operations will fade once more and the militants will emerge on top again. But it is just possible that latest atrocities will convince Pakistan’s people that fighting the terrorist is in their own best interest—not America’s. Indeed, Pakistan’s ministers have been striking a hawkish tone since the Marriott bombing:
“Either we have to fight the Taliban or surrender the country to them,” Rehman Malik, the interior minister, said in the wake of the attack. “If you don’t want your coming generations to be brought up under fire and arms, then you have to fight them unless they surrender.”
If it desires to do so, the popularly elected government will have a legitimacy to pursue the fight that was lacking for Pervez Musharraf’s military dictatorship in its waning days. The trick will be convincing the army (and especially its Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which is compromised by years of deals with the Taliban) to turn on their sometime allies.
