There were 56 acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistan during 2007, resulting inthe death of 419 members of the security forces--the majority of them from thepolice and para-military forces-- and 217 civilians. The most important civiliankilled was Mrs.Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister. As against this, therewere only six incidents in 2006 in which 46 members of the security forces and91 civilians were killed.
Of the 56 incidents of 2007, there were only four during the first six months ofthe year. The remaining 52 took place after the Pakistani commando action in theLal Masjid of Islamabad between July 10 and 13, 2007, in which about 300 tribalgirls studying in a madrasa attached to the mosque were allegedly killed.
Three events of the second half of 2007 led to a wave of suicide terrorism-- thecommando action in the Lal Masjid and the alleged death of a large number oftribal girls; the suicide committed by Abdullah Mehsud, a former inmate of theGuantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, when he was surrounded by the securityforces in Balochistan on July 27,2007, and the army operation in the Swat Valleyof the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in December,2007, against the membersof the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) headed by Maulana FM RadioFazlullah, who had captured de facto control of it, when the NWFP was ruled by asix-party coalition of religious fundamentalist parties called the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). The coalition quit office in proterst against PervezMushaaraf's action in contesting re-election as the President from the outgoingAssemblies elected in 2002. Thereafter, the Army went into action.
The largest number of suicide attacks in a month was in July. There were 15suicide strikes between July 14 and 31,2007-- an average of one a day. Thesecond largest number in a month was in December,2007. There were 10, includingthe assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
There were eight in August, seven in September and six each in October andNovember,2007. One of the six in October was the unsuccessful attempt to killBenazir Bhutto in Karachi on October 18.Of the 52 suicide attacks in the secondhalf of 2007, five were against political leaders-- two against Benazir inKarachi and Rawalpindi, one against some workers of her Pakistan People's Party(PPP) in Islamabad and one each against Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a Pashtunleader of the PPP who had deserted her in 2002 and supported Musharraf, and ajunior Minister of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam).Sherpao was the Interior Minister at the time of the Lal Masjid raid. He and thejunior Minister escaped being killed.The PPP workers in Islamabad were targetedbecause Benazir Bhutto had supported the commando action into the Lal Masjid.
There was one directed against the Chinese working in Pakistan. In Hub,Balochistan, Chinese engineers travelling by a bus escaped death when the buswas attacked by a suicide bomber. There was no attack against American targetsdespite a strong anti-US feeling.
The remaining 46 attacks were against targets associated with the Army, theInter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Special Services Group (SSG) and the AirForce. The police were not the primary targets, but a large number of them diedbecause they were deployed in large numbers to protect the targets. Whenever thepolice guards suspected anyone and called him for frisking, he blew himself up.
Of the 56 attacks during 2007, 23 were in the Federally-Administered TribalAreas (FATA), 21 in the NWFP, including four in the Swat Valley, nine in Punjab,two in Balochistan and one in Sindh. Of the 23 in the FATA, only two were inNorth Waziristan and one in the Bajaur Agency, where, according to the US, theterrorist infrastructure of Al Qaeda is located. The remaining 20 were in SouthWaziristan, where there are no confirmed reports of any Al Qaeda infrastructure.All the attacks in South Waziristan came from areas which are controlled by theMehsuds. In the areas controlled by other tribes, there were no incidents ofsuicide terrorism. Two cantonments saw repeated suicide strikes-- Rawalpindi(5), where the General Headquarters of the Army are located, and Kohat (3) inthe NWFP where a training centre for middle-level army officers is located.
During the second half of 2007, there were two calls for suicide attacks inreprisal for the Lal Masjid raid by Pakistan Army Commandoes. The first wasissued by Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi of the Lal Masjid before he and his studentsupporters were killed by the commandoes. The second was by Osama bin Laden inhis message coinciding with the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 strikes in the USHomeland. The call given by Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi before his death at thehands of the Army had a greater impact on the tribal population in SouthWaziristan and the Swat Valley than the call of bin Laden. The death of Ghaziwas followed by one act of suicide terrorism almost every day for 15 days.
Since the police has not been able to detect most of these incidents so far, onedoes not know for certain how many of these were the outcome of outpouring ofanger by individuals not belonging to any organisation and how many wereorchestrated and co-ordinated by organisations such as Al Qaeda or theTehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan of which Baitullah Mehsud is the Amir.
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B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.
