Peshawar attack piles pressure on Pakistan government
Updated
Even for a city like Peshawar, which has long suffered violence and terrorist attacks, the attack on the market, which killed at least 90 people and injured mroe than 200, was particularly callous.
It comes as the Pakistani military pushes on with its offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan, and as the US renews its commitment to the nation, to get rid of terrorists and fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Raspal Khosa, South Asia specialist at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, ASPI
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KHOSA: Attacks on the Pakistani state have been going on for some time now, they've been going on actually since the Red Mosque incident in Islamabad when security forces overran an extremist mosque in Islamabad very close to the main institutions of state. But obviously there has been a spike in violence prior to the Pakistani assault on Waziristan, south Waziristan, and also as a consequence of Pakistani security forces moving into the Malakand division, in particular the Swat Valley.
LAM: As you say the attacks have been going on for some time, but it would seem that recently the attacks have been on soft targets. We have the attack on the Islamic University in Islamabad last week, and then this week, just last night we had the bomb blasts at the market in Peshawar. Is that a sign of desperation of the Taliban?
KHOSA: It's not the first major attack on a market in Peshawar; the old part of the city in particular has been attacked, But certainly the extremists are starting to target institutions that are perceived as soft targets, in particular the Islamic University in Islamabad the other week.
LAM: And certainly from where I sit there seems to be no massive public outcry in Pakistan against these terror attacks. First of all is that the case, and secondly why do you think this is so?
KHOSA: Look I don't think it's the case. I think there is actually popular backing of the military's move into south Waziristan. I think there is a certain level of disgust at the targets in particular, as Sally Sara pointed out. It was at a bazaar in Peshawar that abounded in women's clothing shops and toy shops and the like and most of the victims appear to be women and children in this case.
LAM: But why is the Taliban embarking on this course though, does it not care that it's alienating the Pakistani community, the Pakistani public?
KHOSA: Well what it's attempting to do is obviously weaken the people's resolve in order to cause a cessation of the military's activities in south Waziristan, which is really attacking their base. So what it's really trying to do is as I said to actually attack this resolve of the public.
LAM: Raspal do you think the Peshawar bombing is in any way linked to the attack on the UN target in neighbouring Afghanistan?
KHOSA: Look the attacks that are going on in Pakistan at the moment have been going on for a little while. There was a visit of the most senior Obama administration official, that's Hilary Clinton coming to Islamabad. So I think that would probably have more to do with the timing of this particular large scale attack. We've got elections in Afghanistan set for the 7th of November. Violence there is going to spike as well. Whether it was a combined attack I'm not sure. These groups do operate in a loose coordination with each other, there is a concatenation of groups in the Federally Administered Tribal areas. At the moment the Pakistani military is attacking the Tariq e Taliban Pakistan, which is an umbrella organisation of a number of tribally based groups in south Waziristan, mainly the Mahsud tribe. Their activities are mainly internally focused on the Pakistani state. The group that has been responsible for conducting a lot of the complex terrorist attacks, highly coordinated terrorist attacks in Kabul is the Haqqani network that has quite close affiliations with the Pakistani ISI strangely enough, but also al Qaeda.
