More troubling news from the anti-terrorism. front. How serious is the situation now in Pakistan? So serious that the government has temporarily closed schools due to bombings:
Pakistan closed schools nationwide for five days after suicide bombers struck a university in the capital, a step that may further erode public tolerance for the country’s Islamic militant movement.
“Educational institutions under the federal government are all closed” following the bombings that killed five people at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, said Atiq-ur- Rehman, a spokesman for the Education Ministry. Schools and colleges run by provincial administrations and private institutions “have independently taken the decision” not to open, he said in a phone interview.
While no group has claimed responsibility for the university attack, “the closing of schools is very big in drawing public attention to the costs we Pakistanis are paying because of the militants,” said Saifullah Khan Mehsud, a political analyst at an Islamabad think-tank.
CNN provides some additional context:
By Wednesday, the death toll from the attacks at Islamabad’s International Islamic University had climbed to six. Twenty-nine others were wounded, said Naeem Iqbal of the Islamabad police. Video Watch more about the attacks »
Officials in the North West Frontier Province, Balochistan and Sindh shuttered their schools and colleges until Sunday. Educational institutions in Punjab will remained closed until further notice.
The back-to-back explosions took place in the faculty area of the men’s section and in the women’s section cafeteria at the university.
More than 12,000 foreign and local students, including 5,500 women, are enrolled in the 29-year-old university.
The university Web site describes the school as a “unique center of learning in the Muslim world which strives to combine the essentials of the Islamic faith with the best of modern knowledge.”
In recent weeks, Pakistan has been relentlessly rocked by suicide attacks as Islamic militants have retaliated against a military offensive to rout insurgents operating along the Pakistan-Afghan border.
In Pakistan, Dawn.com’s editorial starts this way:
Depressingly, though perhaps not unsurprisingly given the beliefs of militant extremists, an educational institution has been targeted by two suicide bombers in Islamabad. That the institution happened to be the International Islamic University may be doubly shocking to some. But the dastardly attack against innocent students on Tuesday is indicative of the fact that the fight for the future of Pakistan does not just pit the ‘godless’ against the ‘true believers’; it is actually a war by a radical minority in society that is bent on imposing its millenarian ideals on the rest of the population, including those trying to educate themselves about Islam in a modern environment. Since the middle years of the Musharraf era, the Islamic University has seen a number of changes in its administration and outlook that have put the university in the ‘moderate’ camp of Islam, a change that, to the militants, amounts to heresy, or even apostasy. And it is now well known that anyone who holds even a slight difference in interpretation of Islam with the militants is a ‘legitimate’ target.
The motive for the bombing of the IIU is not known yet, but two things are known. One, Tuesday’s attack is another in a wave of suicide bombings and fidayeen attacks since the state indicated its intention to enter the ground zero of militancy in South Waziristan. Two, while the IIU has not issued a statement in support of Operation Rah-i-Njiat, it is known that the government and the security establishment have reached out to the media, civil society and other civilian institutions for support. Perhaps, then, the militants have decided to demonstrate their anger at the lack of support for their ‘cause’ among the public.
There more so read it in its entirety.
UK’s The Guardian offers two tidbits:
The attack, the latest in a surge in recent weeks across the country, occurred as troops pressed ahead with an offensive in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. The army, which claims to have killed about 90 militants, said it was meeting tough resistance.
An Associated Press reporter met three Taliban fighters yesterday travelling in a car with darkened windows at Shaktoi, close to the border between South and North Waziristan. They were carrying assault rifles, grenades and radios.
One of the men, who gave his name as Askari, said they had come from South Waziristan, where they and other fighters had pushed the army back from Kotkai, the birthplace of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. and a major strategic prize.
“We are inflicting heavy losses on them,” he said.
Their account was consistent with one provided by two intelligence officials, who said the army had been close to taking Kotkai, but was repelled.
Many students at the Islamabad university did not accept that militants were responsible for the attack and instead blamed shadowy forces out to discredit Islam or weaken Pakistan.
“It shows clearly that anti-Islamic elements are involved in these attacks,” said an economics student, Abul Hassan.
The cartoon by Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE, is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.