View from Pakistan: Today's Blast

Today was Rawalpindi's turn, again.

A few days ago, I was in Pakistan -- cautiously making my way through the cities and towns, wondering when the next bomb would hit.

Because these days in Pakistan, there's always a next bomb.

During Hillary's visit, most of us -- we, the people inside Pakistan -- felt relatively safe. There wasn't going to be any attacks on Islamabad, its twin city Rawalpindi, or Lahore while she was in town. Somehow, it just wasn't going to happen.

When Peshawar felt the brunt on her first day in the country, we all sighed, deep down knowing it got hit because it was easy.

"They are always hiding," a school kid in Islamabad told me about the groups behind these attacks, "then there's a new blast and then they hide again."

Schools are closed for weeks at a time now, students are emailed assignments that go unchecked. One mother told me the school system would likely make up for lost time on weekends and then holidays. "The children are enjoying their break, but it's not for free," the mother said, exhausted from long days of chasing cousins, classmates, sons and daughters around the house.

They may be enjoying the break, but most of these children know exactly why they can't go to school. I sit stiff as one boy looks up from his video game to tell me the school buses might not be safe right now.

In Islamabad and Lahore, I saw universities, grammar schools, pre-schools and colleges with armed men guarding their walls and entrances. The bricklayers of Pakistan are in high demand today as educational facilities are elevating their walls one brick at a time, hoping to avoid what happened at the International Islamic University of Islamabad just a couple weeks ago.

It's startling to see the bricklayers at pre-schools.

The weaving street checkpoints are also higher in number than during my last visit. In certain areas of town, cars are slowed down and swerved around twice or thrice through a short maze of security personnel who look in the windows and then wave the cars by with their semi-automatic weapons. Nearby, makeshift barricades house an officer with his automatic weapon poised, presumably loaded, and aimed in the direction of the checkpoint.

Nobody protests these stops. Everybody looks forward to making it through.

In the cities, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the war in the tribal regions. For decades now, Pakistanis in the Punjab and Sindh have felt distanced from the tribal areas of the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), the NWFP (North Western Frontier Province) and even, to a certain extent, the Baluchistan province. Those places, especially the tribal areas, always seemed excluded from the rest of Pakistan -- somehow jumbled together as part of the buffer zone the British created between India and Afghanistan when the borders of Pakistan were scrawled onto a map.

Pakistanis don't like to think of their country in that way -- a manufactured interim zone -- there is an identity that they are proud of and it shows. It's not the type of entrenched nationalism you see from Iranians, for example, but rather a counter identification: Pakistanis are not Indians.

But the wars in Swat and now South Waziristan -- both areas in the tribal regions -- have actually brought all Pakistanis closer. The city attacks, primarily in Pakistan's largest province of Punjab, have brought the tribal wars close to home for the provinces that for so long felt detached from the tribal regions.

In a bloody, inconceivable way, the urban attacks have united Pakistan.

"Pakistan is fighting a proxy war," one young man told me in Lahore, referring to Pakistan's role in the War on Terror, "and now we are all exhausted from it."

 

Comments

[Kalfardaa]

Great article summarizing the plight of the Pakistanis in this US war on terrorism. The US support for the Pakistani Dictators and Feudals that never allowed social development in Pakistan and this continued transactional relationship where Pakistan forces act as bounty hunters for the US, ignores the core issue of under-development, poverty and lack of social infrastructure. This fact only ignites the flames. Visits by Hillary further adds credence to the Militants claim that the Pakistani establishment is undertaking US orders.

[glyco]

that's unfortunate news for the pakistanis. i can see this becoming a major problem down the line, driving education down can have ban consequences. and the sheer volume of people in pakistan means economically and criminally things get worse with that equation drawn out.

[SaulZ]

All signs show that Zardari led Pakistan Peoples Party and Nawaz led Muslim League will be routed in future elections on towing US lines and bringing US`s war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. There will be new faces restoring Pakistanis­`self-este­em. One has to look at the degree of weakness of Zaradri led Government and supported by USA. Even Iran conveniently pointed its fingers at Pakistan on a recent bomb blast in its part of Balochistan.

Rest assured, there will be new faces in the next elections or even sooner.

[TEHelms]

I feel very deeply for the Pakistani people who are reaping what the ISI and past government policies have sown. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were tolerated in the NW provinces and there was great support for some elements of the muidjahadeen fighters during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan who have now become Taliban or their supporters. It seems everywhere Al Qaeda goes, death and destruction follow, does it not? I hope the Pakistani people can band together to remove these killer elements from their midst. It seems when any area lets Al Qaeda in husbands, wives and children die..very sad.

[BraveWarrior]

You have it all wrong, everywhere America goes death and destruction follow. Hillary scolding Pakistan while bombs and carnage tear apart this nation. They are not fighting hard enough, not killing enough Taliban, not creating enough refugees, not defending American imperialism even after we paid their ruling elites. I thought Candolezza left with the Bushies. Of course the elites are guaranteed a portion of our foreign aid pie, along with the politicians and generals. The poor tribesmen and peasants are truly expendable,-but if they want to eat and are willing to fight we offer about a 100 dollars a month, a rifle and free ammunition. So many sleepless nights worrying about the nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of religious fanatics, like the Taliban, the Iranians and Israeli's. We must stage a coup, start another democratic election and elect someone who will work hard for the money. Maybe if these wars are so important to our national security we will start drafting our own citizens to share the burden. A dangerous thought.

[GZLives]

Is it a joke or are you actually serious?

[Albert Amato]

BraveWar, cynicism and irrational thought will not change anyone.

[TEHelms]

So we are arguing do the ends justify the means? In a perfect world I would say to totally get out of Afghanistan AND Pakistan but this is not perfect, is it? We do mess up many things and we are killing innocent people. I am going to risk using the term "collateral damage" with empathy actually behind those words. And, as Mark Twain once opined, "the boys throw rocks at the frogs in jest; the frogs die, not in jest, but in earnest." I hope we let this action by the Pakistani government play itself out and we stop using drones which kill innocents.

I wish we treated this struggle (jihad?) as a police action and conducted it as such. We have created a war mentality due to the scope and breadth of what we are up against and I think that action needs to change. I say chase Al Qaeda down where we find them and use our military to win actual wars.

Our biggest worry seems to be that fact the Pakis have the bomb, have a history of not keeping it very safe and are ripe for an Islamic extremist takeover. And, this worry is not without merit, would you not agree?

[confidance government]

Will Pakistan be the next Cambodia of US foreign policy..........