THERE CAN BE no doubt as to the aim of those responsible for yesterday’s appalling terrorist attack in Karachi, the fourth in Pakistan against Western interests this year. The bombers had a joint target: The US and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for allying his country alongside the Americans in their war against international terrorism.
Specifically, it was a gesture of defiance following the visit of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a calculated attempt to discredit Gen. Musharraf and destabilize his government. It will do neither. It will only stiffen American resolve to go for those it regards as terrorist enemies while within Pakistan it can hardly damage the president. If anything, it may even bring about a backlash against the militants who hanker after Musharraf’s downfall. As to who was responsible, it is more than likely that it is a group closely linked to Al-Qaeda.
Despite denials from Islamabad, it is widely believed the organization has gone underground in Pakistan’s major cities following the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. But who will suffer from the fallout? And who will gain? To the latter question, there is only one answer: The Indian government of Atal Behari Vajpayee. He must be rubbing his hands in glee. As far as he is concerned, the terrorist attack proves what he has said to the Americans: That Al-Qaeda is involved in Kashmir.
If Vajpayee can get Washington to believe that, then he has firmly them on his side, both in his dispute with Pakistan and in seeing the Kashmir issue as purely a terrorist-inspired insurgency rather than an issue about occupation and resistance that will never go away until it is addressed. Vajpayee must now be happily convinced that Washington is listening to him and not to Pakistan. It was touch and go a couple of days ago.
When Donald Rumsfeld was in Delhi, he said he believed that Al-Qaeda was operating in Kashmir near the Line of Control. Whether he had taken the line direct from Delhi or came to it independently, the view incensed Pakistan. It had no doubt from where Rumsfeld got the idea. A spokesman for Gen. Musharraf called it “typical Indian propaganda” aimed at discrediting the Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination. Diplomacy forced Rumsfeld to recant by the time he arrived in Islamabad the day before yesterday. His new line was that neither he nor the US had any evidence that Al-Qaeda were in Kashmir. It is doubtful whether he will stick to that now.
The Americans will certainly view the attack as the work of Al-Qaeda or a Pakistani group linked to it (they make no distinction between the two: To them, they are all Al-Qaeda.) The fact that it may or not be specifically at work in Kashmir becomes a minor detail. The thing that will exercise Washington is that it is active in Pakistan and Pakistan has not stamped it out.
In terms of propaganda value, coming when it did with Rumsfeld’s visit to the region barely over, this is a massive coup for Vajpayee and a blow for Pakistan. What with the bomb killing only Pakistanis as well, it is no wonder then the government in Islamabad openly suggests Indian intelligence may have been involved.
There is no evidence, but it is India that benefits and the Pakistanis and Kashmiris who lose. If those responsible for the atrocity have a genuine concern for either of the latter (and presumably they do) it is time that they realized that spectacular own goals like this have to stop. They are doing Pakistan and Kashmir immeasurable political harm, playing directly into India’s hands and with the exodus of foreign businessmen, a great deal of economic harm too.
