PAKISTAN: Embassy Bombing Shatters Bhutto’s Liberal Image

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Nasim Zehra

ISLAMABAD, Nov 21 1995 (IPS) - Pakistan’s Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has never tired of projecting herself as the leader of a liberal Islamic country.

But Pakistani political observers think the bombing on Sunday of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad’s leafy diplomatic enclave may seriously erode her credibility.

Three militant Islamic Egyptian groups — Gama’a Al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), Jihad (Holy Struggle) and the International Justice Group — have claimed responsibility for the suspected suicide bomb explosion on Sunday, which killed at least 16 people. Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has set up an inter- ministerial inquiry committee due to report to the government within the week.

Bhutto, who was away campaigning for a by-election to Parliament, has offered to rebuild the Egyptian Embassy. But this might not be sufficient to restore confidence in Pakistan’s ability to stop radical groups using the country as a base.

Pakistan’s religious seminaries close to the Afghan border have attracted tens of thousands of Islamists since the 1980s. Apart from Afghanistan’s Taliban student militia, militant Islamic groups from Algeria to Egypt and Sudan have roots here.

Successive batches of students have received religious instruction, and during the war conducted by Afghan mujahiddin against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, training in warfare and handling explosives.

With the fall of the Najibullah-government in Kabul in April 1992, the non-Afghan mujahiddin began returning either to their own countries or joining other Islamic groups fighting for independence like in the Indian state of Kashmir.

In 1993, Pakistan narrowly missed being labelled a “terrorist state” by the United States, after the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York by a militant Egyptian group that had links in Pakistan.

Islamabad cracked down on foreign Islamic groups, but many of its members wanted by governments in their own countries, just slipped across the mountain border into warring Afghanistan.

Experts say the daylight bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad was intended to drive home the message that militant Islamic groups would strike at targets abroad in their fight against the government of President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian president himself escaped an assassination attempt in June in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

For Islamabad, the bombing was the city’s first close brush with international “terrorism”. The attack blasted away notions that the capital was a secure haven, far from the violence and turmoil of the Pakistani port city of Karachi, and the raging war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The Egyptian Embassy is located close to the Pakistan foreign office, the UN building, and the embassies of France, Britain, India, Iran and the United States. The presidential palace, the Supreme Court and the prime minister’s office are all a kilometre away. Security police constantly patrol the area.

A 15-member team of Egyptian investigators has arrived in the capital. Accounts vary as to how the suspected suicide bomber managed to get inside the compound.

Fatima Hameed, an eye-witness, said she was in the car park of the nearby Grindlays Bank, just 50 metres from the scene of the explosion. “I was standing next to my car when I heard an explosion. I saw a huge orange ball of fire over the embassy.”

The explosion reduced the front of the embassy to rubble. However, within minutes police and medical staff raced to the scene. And rescuers dug through the rubble with their hands, pushing aside cement blocks, looking for survivors.

While the dead were piled into a police truck, the more than 60 wounded people were rushed to hospital. Police said most of the wounded and dead were Pakistani security guards and visa seekers.

Late last year Egypt and Pakistan signed an extradition treaty. Radical Egyptian groups trained during the Afghan war by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, with funds and arms from the United States, are viewed by Cairo as masterminding the subversion at home.

It is, however, virtually impossible for Pakistan to control the flow of arms and men across its borders. Though the 12-year proxy war between the United States and Soviet Union in Afghanistan has ended, Pakistan is awash with explosives and guns. Peshawar, 100-km west of Islamabad as the crow flies, has a

thriving arms bazaar, where money can buy the latest weaponry.

Many militant Islamic groups have had their origin in Pakistan. Afghanistan’s Taliban student militia learnt their lessons in warfare in southwestern Baluchistan province. Though the government has denied the claims, the Taliban are believed to have been trained and funded by Pakistan’s intelligence services.

The bombing in Islamabad is worrying liberal Pakistanis, who question the direction of the country’s domestic politics and security policy. The arrest last month of at least 40 military men for planning an Islamic revolt against the elected government have reinforced fears of the consequences of whipping up religious fervour.

PAKISTAN: Embassy Bombing Shatters Bhutto’s Liberal Image

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Nasim Zehra

ISLAMABAD, Nov 21 1995 (IPS) - Pakistan’s Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has never tired of projecting herself as the leader of a liberal Islamic country.
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