The attack yesterday on the Peshawar headquarters building of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is deeply disturbing. After a series of militant assaults on military targets in the build-up to and since the start of the army drive into South Waziristan, it would have been thought army would have tightened its lax security. The fact that a suicide car bomber was able to get close enough to the ISI offices to virtually destroy them in the blast is frankly astonishing.
The competence of the Pakistani military when fighting in the field has been proven. The action earlier this year in the Swat Valley and now again in Waziristan demonstrates that commanders and troops are able to prevail against militant formations when they choose to stand and fight. The insurgents know they are not going to win in such pitched battles.
They know very well that they have neither the discipline nor the organization to resist the army.
Equally they simply cannot afford, in terms of both life and funds, to keep hiring tribesman to fight the military. The only way the militants can strike effectively at the forces of law and order is by terrorist attacks on both civilian and military targets.
The recent murderous attack in a Peshawar women’s market, which slew more than 90 people was a classic terrorist action, both in its heartless destruction of women and children and in the fact that it was aimed at an easy, so-called “soft target”. The reason terrorists around the world have mounted such crimes is that as a general rule, government offices, police stations and military buildings are too heavily guarded to permit a successful attack.
The Taleban suicide car bombing on Friday on a NATO base is a case in point. The facility was too well defended and Afghan and NATO guards too alert to allow the bomber to get very far toward the base. Thus the only person who died in the explosion was the car bomber. Three foreign soldiers and three Afghan civilians were injured but reportedly none seriously. Why then have not the Pakistani military deployed a similar high level of security on their own installations? It is hardly a surprise that they are being targeted by insurgents. Yet once again, attackers have been able to reach their goal.
The ISI building in Peshawar was, like many other Pakistani military facilities, within a guarded cantonment. It beggars belief that the bomber and his vehicle managed to pass through that security cordon. It is unclear whether the man bluffed his way through or rammed past security gates. Either way this is a gross failure. It is axiomatic that anyone entering secure premises must be checked thoroughly along with their vehicle. It is equally clear that barriers have to be sufficient to stop even a large lorry being able to smash its way through.
The failure of Pakistan’s generals to protect even their own army headquarters is not only humiliating but an insult to their troops doggedly fighting the insurgents in Waziristan. They must sort this out.
