ISLAMABAD, 22 November 2003 — Pakistan risks being bombed and sanctioned unless it eradicates “senseless” religious extremism, President Pervez Musharraf warned in comments reported yesterday.
Pakistan will suffer from sanctions and “they may even start bombing our tribal areas,” Gen. Musharraf told local newspaper editors late Thursday, according to the Dawn daily.
He did not specify who would drop bombs on Pakistani territory but he was understood to be referring to the United States, whose troops are combing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in their two-year hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters and Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden.
“If we don’t control the tribal areas and they start bombing your tribal areas, what will we do? Let us not be under any illusion,” the Nation newspaper quoted Musharraf as saying.
Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters are believed to be using bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the porous border to orchestrate a bloody guerrilla campaign against aid workers and troops inside Afghanistan. Eighteen of them were captured and eight killed by Pakistani troops near the Afghan border on Oct. 2.
Musharraf issued the warning in the midst of an intensified crackdown on extremists, targeting already-outlawed groups which had re-emerged under new names.
Authorities are also swooping on suspected Taleban sympathizers among illegal Afghan immigrants in the southwest border province of Balochistan.
Police shut the offices of two more banned radical organizations, officials said yesterday. In the past week, Musharraf ordered the closure of six groups accused of militancy and sectarianism — the latest three on Thursday — drawing praise from the United States, which counts Pakistan as a key ally in its war on terrorism.
Musharraf said the closures were in the “national interest” and not done at the behest of a foreign power.
“All of us have to make efforts to reject, condemn and stop religious and sectarian extremism, as the menace can adversely affect the country’s economic progress,” Musharraf said.
