Blast At Spy Agency In NW Pakistan Kills Seven

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide car bomb devastated Pakistan's main spy agency building in the northwest Friday, killing at least 7 people and striking at the heart of the institution overseeing much of the country's anti-terror campaign.

The blast in Peshawar was the latest in a string of bloody attacks on security forces, civilian and Western targets since the government launched an offensive in mid-October against militants in the border region of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding out.

The early-morning blast, heard across the city, destroyed much of the three-story building belonging to the Inter-Services Intelligence agency and many cars on the street outside. An Associated Press reporter on the scene within minutes saw several dead or badly wounded bodies being taken away.

Seven bodies and 35 wounded people were admitted to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital, police officer Ullah Khan said.

Peshawar Police chief Liaqat Ali Khan said a car bomber attacked the main gate of the complex.

Just over an hour later, another suicide car bomb wounded 10 people at police station in Bakakhel, a town in the semiautonomous tribal regions, intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity because of the nature of their work.

The government has vowed that the surging militant attacks will not dent the country's resolve to pursue the offensive in South Waziristan, where officials say the most deadly insurgent network in Pakistan is based. The army claims to be making good progress in that campaign.

The ISI agency has been involved in scores of covert operations in the northwest against al-Qaida targets since 2001, when many militant leaders crossed into the area following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The region is seen as a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

Its offices in Peshawar are on the main road leading from the city to Afghanistan. The agency was instrumental in using CIA money to train jihadi groups to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Despite assisting in the fight against al-Qaida since then, some Western officials consider the agency an unreliable ally and allege it still maintains links with the militants.

The insurgents are waging a war against the Pakistani government because they deem it un-Islamic and are angry about its alliance with the United States.

The insurgency began in earnest in 2007, and attacks have spiked since the run-up to the offensive in South Waziristan.

Areas in and around Peshawar have experienced the brunt of the recent militant attacks. A car bomb exploded in a market in Peshawar at the end of October, killing at least 112 people in the deadliest attack in Pakistan in over two years.

On Oct. 10, a team of militants staged a raid on the army headquarters close to the capital, Islamabad, taking soldiers hostages in a 22-hour standoff that left nine militants and 14 others dead.

Comments

[Oleg1]

Up unitl recently Pakistan was focused on Indian border as a the point of maximal threat. No longer. Pakistani government and people are now addressing a far more serious threat--Islamicist militant insurgency. I wish them good luck in trying to suppress this enemy of the world.

[thepoliticalcat]

Where did you get the idea that there is a "very real threat of invasion from India"? India was glad to be rid of the mohajirs, thus reducing its own Muslim population. Why on earth would India want to invade?

Pakistan is responsible for multiple attacks against other countries in the region. That hardly counts as being 'a force for peace and stability.' Quite apart from the incidents that occurred in India, there was the suppression of the Awami league followed by invasion and massacres in Bangladesh, the ISI funding and support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the unwarranted brutality that is even now taking place in Baluchistan and Waziristan. I can only assume that you are not ethnically Indian or Pakistani. Any south Asian ought to know better.

[Durango]

Abysmalreadingcomprehension

[abouttime]

Pure Associated Press propaganda for the WAR MACHINE!

"The ISI agency has been involved in scores of covert operations in the northwest against al-Qaida targets since 2001, when many militant leaders crossed into the area following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The region is seen as a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden."

This is pure BS.
It makes it sound as though the Bush Family doesn't Like bin Laden. Note: Prez candidate Bhuhto said bin Laden was certainly dead years ago She was shortly thereafter assasinated
Besides, the AP has a history of distortions and dubious connections to the dominant US military industrial and imperial war machine. The AP down plays coups of democratically elected goverments in Haiti and now Hondurous. The AP quotes known liars with no rebutals sited.
The AP...

[Oleg1]

sob..sob.. another Jihadist complains about bias.

[mamacat]

What a mess.
So glad we decided to get involved in the internal politics of this region, instead of going after Osama and his gang.

[thepoliticalcat]

The ISI has, for decades, forged unsavoury alliances and worked with the army to overthrow democratically elected leaders and oppress the border tribes. This is their own shenanigans coming back upon their heads. My sympathies to their innocent families, but I doubt anyone in the borderlands or even in Pakistan itself (excepting, of course, the wealthy elite who have made a career of siphoning off foreign aid) will shed a tear for these people.

[mullah]

Even the broken clock is right twice a day. In this case, they were right in @attacking the lSl

[satyameva-jayate]

Pakistan's raison d'etre is an all consuming burning hatred for "Hindu" India. To that extent they have re-written History books and since the days of Zia have schooled two generations of students about destroying India. Don't get me wrong - I am no fundamentalist. But if your only purpose to be alive is to see the down fall of India at any cost, then He who lives by the sword......

They had forged all these Islamic groups together to be a strategic reserve against India and now it has come back to bite them.

The only salvation for them is to stop considering India as an enemy ( India has never invaded a country in 5000 years of recorded history), ruthlessly weed out all Islamic groups ( friendly or unfriendly) and become a true secular democratic republic ( not an Islamic Republic - that by the way is an Oxymoron).

[thepoliticalcat]

While the intention was to form a secular democracy, that has long since fallen by the wayside. The vast majority of the country is poor and illiterate, mainly farmers scratching out a subsistence on barren soil. Instead of investing in education, the successive governments have left education in the hands of the madrassahs, which have largely been taken over by Wahabists, thanks to oil money pouring in from our good friends in Saudi Arabia. The Western-educated elite form a very tiny minority and seem to be more interested in pocketing aid monies while simultaneously exploiting and oppressing their Islamic brethren of the poorer ilk. This is a failed nation, by any standards. All power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority, and the vast majority are poor, uneducated, and exploited to the nth degree. And, thanks to aid and technology from us, they have nuclear weapons. Can they secure their nuclear arsenal? Probably not.

If American foreign policy had been based on any kind of knowledge or understanding of other cultures, this situation might well have been avoided. But that would require hiring people for their qualifications rather than their ideology and narrow worldview.

[raskefing]

The perception that the problem lies at the door of the Pakistan government ignores the obvious fact , would Pakistan be in this situation if they were not part of the United States so- called war on terror ?
Every where the United States sends its Army to " protect freedom and democracy " violence and death surges and the local population suffers !
whether in Iraq ,Pakistan, Afghanistan or soon to be Iran, the population is faced with increased violence and death, the cure is always worse than the disease !
This conflict in Pakistan will only end when the the west controls the Nuclear weapons of the Only Muslim state with Nuclear weapons.
This war on terror is just an excuse for the US to deprive their own population at home of most of their civil rights and a desperate last grab at absolute control of the worlds oil resources in this period of Post Peak OIL.
The world is in danger of entering another Dark AGE !

[pkafin]

You are mostly right. However, I take issue with your assertion that, absent the war on terror, Pakistan would not have these problems. The tensions in Pakistan have been brewing for decades. Prior to 2001, Pakistan had leaders assassinated, tribal skirmishes, poor control of ill defined borders, and occasional flareups with India that allowed for the same kind of internal suppression and resource grab that you refer to in you post having happened in the US.

I'm sure it has it's own edge due to US activities in the region. But, absent that, there would be plenty of other pressures driving the violent craziness.

[thepoliticalcat]

Pakistan was wobbly at its inception. Even its name, "Pak-e-stan," which means "Land of the Pure," is hardly indictative of a secular nation. In order to win the masses to the concept of a separate nation (or nations, back in the day, with Bangladesh), Mohd. Ali Jinnah, the most westernized of Muslims of his time, sought to appeal to their religious fervor, successfully, as it turned out. However, Jinnah, and those members of his Muslim league behaved more like the Westerners, under whom they were educated, than the superstitious and ignorant masses they purported to lead. The eventual outcome is what we now see - a tiny sliver of the nation is Western-educated, prosperous, and maintained in power by the ISI and the Sandhurst- and West Point-educated military elite. It is now a failed state in Weberian, as by any other, terms. The "woah on Terrrra" was never designed to do anything to resolve issues in the Middle East and the Islamic nations. Bouche himself openly referred to it as a Crusade; if you know anything about the history of Islam, that is a truly offensive term that cannot but build suspicion and fear of anyone using it. It was simply an excuse for the ruling class, whether in America or Pakistan, to siphon vast amounts of taxpayer dollars into their own pockets.

[mullah]

Through all the skullduggery, it appears that Beijing continued to lie baldly even as Washington lived in blissful ignorance through occasional lurking suspicion. Time and again, Chinese officials lied about adhering to the international duty of prevention the proliferation of nuclear weapons. US officials too hummed and hawed about the transactions because at the height of the Islamabad-Beijing exchanges, Washington was dependent on Pakistan to rout Soviet Union from Afghanistan and it was also warming up to Beijing, where the senior George Bush had served as the US envoy before returning to Washington DC as the CIA Director and then becoming vice-president under Ronald Reagan.

But the big question now is what Barack Obama will do about a transaction the Washington Post called ''an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power.'' The US President, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism on several fronts, including his intent to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, arrives in Beijing on Tuesday on a swing through East Asia that will take him to Japan and South Korea, two other US allies also concerned about China. Unless Obama takes note of the disclosures and acts on them, he will be seen to joining a long list of US Presidents, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, whose concern about proliferation were largely cosmetic and selective, resulting in a free pass to China and Pakistan. .

[Durango]

You expect President Obama to act on the long ago "fait accompli" of Pakistani nuclear weapons?

You don't suppose there are more topical subjects on his long list of topics to discuss with the Chinese?

BTW Pakistani nukes have secured that country from the very real threat of invasion from India. And in fact have been a force for peace and stability in the region.

If Pakistan didn't have those weapons I have no doubt India would have invaded after the attack on their Parliament. Or Mombai.

We avoided a conventional war in one of the most densely populated spots on the planet.

[Tenjikuronin]

India never had any plans to invade Pakistan. I mean really, if India had wanted to invade Pakistan they could have done so any time after 1947, but in reality they had no interest in absorbing Pakistan.

Also, its spelled 'Mumbai' not mombai.

[thepoliticalcat]

Where did you get the idea that there is a "very real threat of invasion from India"? India was glad to be rid of the mohajirs, thus reducing its own Muslim population. Why on earth would India want to invade?

Pakistan is responsible for multiple attacks of terrorism against other countries in the region. That hardly counts as being 'a force for peace and stability.' Quite apart from the incidents that occurred in India, you seem to have conveniently forgotten about Bangladesh, the ISI funding and support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the unwarranted brutality that is even now taking place in Baluchistan and Waziristan. I hope you are not ethnically Indian or Pakistani, as that is the only thing that could explain your abysmalignorance.

[thepoliticalcat]

You know what they say, as in the old joke: Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep? Any place he wants to.

China is now our 800-pound gorilla. Back in the 1940s, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high-ranking members of the Communist Party reached out to the US repeatedly, hoping for an alliance. However, paranoia and self-delusion among American foreign policy experts led to fear of a "Communist menace," and caused the US to prefer alliance with known fascists instead. The US repeatedly refused to negotiate with China and used the fear of military engagement with both China and the then-USSR to manipulate the politics of many small countries which suffered terribly: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and many other nations fell victim to this short-sightedness. This situation is now part of the mess left to our generation and our successors to clean up. How can we say anything at all to China? It's their money that's keeping us afloat. As for Pakistan/Afghanistan, we need to disengage promptly while ensuring that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe -- a difficult task at best when security forces that should be ensuring national stability are, instead, functioning as a Praetorian guard to ensure that the rich suffer no consequences for their accumulation of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

[NYkid]

Is this a reaction to the drones?

[Paganus]

No.

[alex98]

Since the ISI and its schemes are the root of many of our problems in that part of the world... I'll keep my thought on this subject to myself ; )

[TXfemmom]

I wonder if this will convince the ISI, or the Pakistan CIA, to finally stop working with the Taliban and go after them and Al Qaeda. Members of that service created and nourished the Taliban and Al Qaeda and now they are the targets. There are members with the ISI who know where all the Taliban and Al Qaeda are, and if Pakistan really had the push and motivation to do it, they might be able to get them.

Instead, they have kept the overwhelming numbers of their Army on the border with India, which isn't going to do anything to them, and train for that kind of conventional war, instead of what they are seeing with the Taliban.

[FHTB]

This would be like Al Queda turning on Saudi Arabia, where much of that other perverse and twisted group of miscreants have originally hailed from.

[Durango]

Al Qaida long ago turned on Saudi Arabia.

And the Kingdom appears to be effective in fighting al Qaida and their allies.

Not sol sure it is the oil bin Ladin and his crew seek, although that would be a huge side benefit, as much as possession of Mecca and Medina.

You don't know that bin Ladin is a mortal threat to the Kingdom?

[thepoliticalcat]

The ISI supports and funds the Taliban. It's going to be a little difficult for them to disengage now.

Instead of building up their resources against the poverty, hunger, ignorance, fear, and disease that oppresses their own country, the ISI has consistently spent U.S. taxpayer dollars on the fictional "war with India," which in reality will never come. India has too many problems to want to add to them by involving herself in Pakistan's affairs. Bear in mind that a majority of the population of Pakistan has been educated in Wahabist madrassahs sponsored by the Saudi government. They wholeheartedly support the Taliban. If the government of Pakistan moves openly against the Taliban, they risk inflaming a civil war.

[Durango]

That is patently false.

What exactly do you think is happening in South Waziristan as we speak?

[chandu11]

Blowback is a bi@ch!

[Smithn]

Condolences to all those dying in this cause against terrorism. And a prayer for success in their Waziristan insurgency.

[Durango]

I would assume you meant "success in their Waziristan COUNTER insurgency.

Or at least hope so.

[Durango]

Interesting development.

I have assumed that the Pakistani Army would have success fighting the Taliban because they know all the players and where they reside because the ISI had supported them all along.

Which means that this attack is evidence that the split is now irrevocable. I would imagine an attack like that would only solidify the ISI's support for the military offensive.

Of course they have long played all sides against the middle so nothing is certain when it comes to Pakistan and especially the ISI.

But it appears the offensive in Waziristan is working.

Which means the overall strategy of the Obama Administration is paying off as well.

[Cinnamonape]

Then again it could also mean that the ISI is reft with supporters of the Talib and al-Qaida. Doesn't take many to allow a "security lapse" that would let a suicide bomber into the precincts...although maybe a 'good sign' in this is that it happened at the gates. The ISI will perhaps start to look into how close their brethren are to the enemy, or else they could be blown to mincemeat.

It's now a race to see how long the offensive can be sustained before the public starts to say "enough". Of course it could break down into a Sri Lanka type situation of long-term perpetual terror that can only be ended in the same way it was there.

[Durango]

I think the population, outside of the Pahtun/Taliban strongholds long ago said enough.

I think the bombings will solidify support for the government.

Certainly hope it doesn't become a Sri Lanka type situation. That would be the worst possible outcome.

[TXfemmom]

I hae to think that it happened at the gates, rather than inside, may means that the ISI has finally realized that the Taliban and the militants are going to slit their throats, if they can and will finally start working with the government and the military to get the Taliban and other militants. They should know where all the skeletons are, but they have yet to score really big things on the fields.