Daily Times

The bomb blast near Faizabad interchange in Islamabad on Thursday left many people shaken, not the least former president General Pervez Musharraf, allegedly the target of the attack. The convoy transporting him from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) to his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad passed by moments before the explosion, which fortunately was small and left no casualties. Security officials say the bomb was a one or two kilogram device placed in or near a drainpipe on the former president’s route and his spokespersons say that he was clearly a target for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that admittedly hold a visceral hatred for him. However, yesterday’s attack does not bear the hallmarks of the TTP who usually aim to create as much death and destruction as possible. Their natural target would be the Faizabad bridge itself, with its heavy traffic and the possibility of numerous civilian casualties, the bomb being a distraction while gunmen move in for the kill. This is their now recognised modus operandi. That the bomb exploded after the convoy passed and the incident occurred as discussions about the government allowing General Musharraf to leave the country are heating up has led some sceptics to argue that the military might have orchestrated a minor incident in order to convince the government. However, speculation of this nature tends to malign the armed forces, which one hopes would never engage in violent subterfuge and damage the country’s infrastructure just to make a political point.
While details remain sketchy, one fact that stands out is the ease with which the bomb was placed in such a sensitive area, highlighting how easy it might be for terrorists to take dozens, maybe hundreds of lives without breaking a sweat. Faizabad interchange is part of Islamabad Capital Territory. However, unlike the rest of Islamabad, it is a chaotic locality, with hundreds of vehicles and people trying to occupy the road at the same time. The surrounding unplanned semi-urban areas sprang up virtually overnight after 2001 with little oversight or regulation by the authorities. Who lives there and does what is not recorded as strictly, if at all, as in the better planned areas of the capital. While negotiations with the TTP continue, ultimately the government’s most important job is to show that it can govern better than the TTP ever could even under the bizarre ideology they label sharia but which bears little resemblance to Islam. While experts disagree about the root causes of terrorism and whether bad governance is to blame, the government does itself and the country no favours by allowing chaos to develop outside of a few strictly planned enclaves. Criminality and chaos are what terrorists thrive on and hope to inflame with their atrocities. By cleaning up its house the government limits the opportunities for terrorists to move and plan freely. That is even more important than negotiating with them. *