Pakistan: Confronting homegrown terrorism

The appalling bombing of the Islamabad Marriott this week was “Pakistan’s very own 9/11,” said the Islamabad News in an editorial. A suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed truck into the hotel entrance, destroying the building and killing at least 80 people. “Even in a nation that has become resilient to shock and accustomed to terrorist violence, the attack has created horror.” To strike the country’s most popular hotel at the very hour when Pakistanis would be breaking their Ramadan fast is repugnant. The attack has finally awakened Pakistan to the terrifying fact that the jihadist sickness is of our own making. We can’t blame it on Afghans or Americans or anyone else: The perpetrators of this bombing were Pakistanis. “Our flawed policies” have allowed the growth of “the maddened mind-sets of hatred” that seduce our youth in madrasas. We must accept that the war on terror is not just an American war, it is now also “Pakistan’s war.”

This carnage should silence the “terror apologists,” said the Karachi Dawn. Far too many Pakistanis have been silently complicit with one or another group of terrorists, approving of their aims—to oppose “the Americans or Indians or the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan”—if not their methods. We need a clear statement from the government that all terrorism is unacceptable, that all terrorists will be found and punished. “A counterinsurgency strategy is needed for all parts of Pakistan.”

What good will that do? asked the Islamabad Pakistan Observer. There will always be more terrorists willing to kill and die as long as the U.S. keeps bombing the tribal areas. “The U.S.-led West is the root cause of what is happening in our country. They are directly to be blamed for our miseries caused by their interventionist and intrusive policies in the region.” As long as the U.S. “remains in occupation” of Afghanistan, Pakistan will know no peace.

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That’s a cop-out, said the Islamabad Nation. “Our full-scale collaboration” in the American struggle with the Taliban means that this is our war, too. And it has to be waged not just on the ground, with guns and drones seeking out the terrorists, but in the realm of the spirit. During this holy month of Ramadan, clerics should remind all Pakistanis of the true teachings of Islam. There is no place for terror. Instead, the Koran offers a “clear verdict against suicide and in favor of the sanctity of life.”