Within hours of the successful May 2 U.S. military operation to kill Osama bin Laden,
the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP) - an avowed al-Qaeda ally -- promised revenge. On May 13,
close to 100 graduates of the paramilitary Frontier Corps lost their lives to
two motor-bike riding suicide bombers in Shabqadar near Peshawar,
one of the deadliest attacks on Pakistan's
security forces in recent years. Nearly ten days later, some 10 to 12 intruders
turned Pakistan Navy's Mehran base in Karachi into a battlefield.
The siege ended May 23 after almost 17 hours of hostilities, with
at least a dozen casualties to the Navy.
The deadly
and prolonged attack Sunday evening on the base is the latest reminder of
how vulnerable the country's defense installations are. Located in the main
part of the city, the Shahrah-e-Faisal, the base is jointly used by Pakistan's
army, air force and navy. NATO forces also occasionally use the base for
logistics operations between the strategic port
of Karachi and Afghanistan.
Yet though the TTP quickly claimed credit for the assault, its careful planning
and execution - the fighters, a Taliban spokesman claimed, carried food
and ammunition for three days - recalled the "fidayeen"
style of drawn-out suicide attack pioneered by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in
Indian-administered Kashmir against Indian personnel and installations, and
used to devastating effect in 2008 in Mumbai.
A similar raid on the army General Headquarters (GHQ) - the
heart of the Pakistani military establishment - in October 2009 was the first
terrorist attack to truly stun Pakistan's
establishment. The ensuing siege of a part of GHQ ended after nearly 22 hours
with a counter-commando raid. Earlier that month, as well as in March of that
year, the Manawan Police Training School
on the outskirts of Lahore
endured similar
attacks by armed militants, which lasted several hours. The attack in March
that year on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore also bore hallmarks of the LeT-style
commando attack.
And on December 4, 2009 an almost identical
attack was staged on a mosque in the garrison of Rawalpindi, where the GHQ is located, left nearly
40 people dead. Most of them had just finished their Friday prayers and were
about to disperse when the attack began. The son of the then corps commander of
Peshawar,
General Masood Aslam, was also among the victims of the deadly strike. Attacks
on three ISI establishments in Lahore,
Faisalabad
and Peshawar
also allegedly involved militants who had been trained in storming a
heavily-protected target and killing those who got in their way.
The raid on Mehran, coming within a
month of multiple attacks on Pakistan Navy buses and
installations, once again raises
serious questions about the level of preparedness within the security
establishment. Yet more importantly, it underscores the extended reach of al-Qaeda
and affiliated groups, as well as the manner in which tactics and tools once
used by groups in the thrall of the Pakistani state are increasingly being
turned against it.
The storming of Mehran has clearly exposed inadequacies in
the defense and security arrangements, inadequacies for which a restless public
will demand
an explanation. Yet the attack raises far more troubling questions about Pakistan's
long-held "double game" of supporting "good" militants while fighting "bad"
ones. Does the string of attacks on military and intelligence assets mean those
trained in these tactics against India have now turned on their past
benefactor? Is it the hatred for the military establishment they believe has
betrayed them, or do these attacks mark a full surrender to the ideology of al-Qaeda
that has unleashed former state-sanctioned mujahideen
on the Pakistani establishment? It is
likely some combination of the two, but regardless, the increasingly violent
turn paired with the growing military aptitude of Pakistan's foes means that they
country's military may soon be forced to reconsider the means they have deployed
for so long to meet their regional ends.
Imtiaz Gul heads the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies
-- CRSS-Islamabad -- and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place.
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