A terror strike stuns Pakistan

Pakistan’s Islamic militants raised the stakes in their conflict with the country’s new government last week as massive suicide truck bomb ripped through a luxury hotel in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, killing 53 and injuring more than 250. The bombing of the Marriott Hotel came shortly after newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari and his Cabinet had been scheduled to be at the hotel, and officials speculated that they were the targets. In the days following the attack, gunmen kidnapped the top Afghan diplomat in Pakistan, and a suicide bombing killed nine police officers north of the capital.

Officials said the spate of attacks was likely the work of al Qaida and the Taliban, possibly in response to government offensives in the tribal regions near Afghanistan. Pakistani troops said they fired on U.S. personnel who had crossed the border in pursuit of militants—a claim the U.S. denied. At the U.N. this week, Zardari met with President Bush and said Pakistan would accept U.S. assistance, but not interference. “Give us the intelligence and we will do the job,” he said.

Pakistan is facing “a critical test,” said Ismail Khan and Carlotta Gall in The New York Times. By killing so many Pakistanis in the heart of the country, the Islamic extremists have made clear their goal is not to fight Americans in Afghanistan but to topple the Pakistani government. In the past, Pakistan has responded to terrorism by negotiating cease-fires, a strategy that has only “left the militants stronger.” Now officials say they are determined to annihilate the militant threat on the battlefield.

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The best thing the U.S. can do, said Robert Baer in Time.com, is get out of Pakistan’s way. America’s recent moves along the Afghanistan border are a violation of Pakistani sovereignty; they are radicalizing the population and making it hard for the fledgling government to wage its own battles. Pakistan could be on the verge of civil war. “Should we be adding to the force of chaos?”

The problem with America’s cross-border raids, said Steve Coll in Newyorker.com, is that military action makes sense only as a small component of a coherent political approach. Our incursions wouldn’t ruffle so many feathers if we also had a plan for nurturing “a stable, democratic, modernizing Pakistan at peace with its neighbors.” Developing one must be a top priority of the next American president.