Pakistan’s Insurgency, Continued

The fourth suicide bomber in less than a week kills a policeman in Dera Ismail Khan

Pakistan has suffered its fourth suicide bombing since January 22nd. Today, a 17 year old suicide bomber detonated his vest after being searched by police outside of a Shia celebration in Dera Ismail Khan, a district in the Northwest Frontier Province. One policeman was killed, and eight others were wounded, 2 critically.

The Kuwaiti News Agency reported that just prior to the suicide bombing, 6 suspected “suicide bombers from Dera Ismail Khan” were arrested. “Reports said most of them belong to South Waziristan tribal agency,” according to KUNA.

The three prior suicide bombings over the past week include an attack on a military patrol in South Waziristan, a bombing on the Marriott hotel in the capital of Islamabad and the suicide attack on the police chief of the provincial capital in Peshawar.

While the government rushes to attempt to put a stop to the suicide strikes, it finds itself powerless to arrest wanted Taliban fugitives, despite their location being known to the authorities. Syed Saleem Shahzad reports two clerics, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz, who are the “leading ideologues of the Pakistani Taliban” are “wanted by Pakistan’s interior ministry.”

Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz first made headlines when they issued a religious decree in 2004 against Pakistani armed forces personnel fighting against al Qaeda militants in South Waziristan. The decree stated that Pakistani soldiers fighting South Waziristan did not deserve a Muslim funeral or burial at Muslim cemeteries in the event that they were killed while fighting in the tribal region which lies on the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The religious decree was well-received in extremist circles and 500 other religious scholars signed the edict. The decree turned out to be a major reason why many officers and soldiers in the Pakistani army refused to fight militants in Waziristan.

Rasheed and Aziz, who promised suicide attacks after the Pakistani military struck at an al Qaeda and Taliban camp in the Zamazola region of South Waziristan, “cannot leave the premises of the Lal Masjid, the central mosque in Islamabad, as there are warrants for their arrest.” Musharraf is said to have “asked the Pakistani Air Force to carry out an air strike” on the mosque, in the center of the capital of Pakistan. The military declined.

The Taliban, al Qaeda and allied movements (AQAM) are waging a clever insurgency, depending up the military and government to balk at taking real action to address the problem. The insurgency has deep roots in the tribal areas and the urban centers, including the capital of Islamabad itself.

See The Fall of Waziristan: An Online History for more information.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Tags: Pakistan