4. Devastation in Islamabad
[SOURCE 9]
Pakistan
responded to Indian accusations over the Mumbai massacre by pointing
out that it, too, is under attack by terrorists. Militants operating
in Pakistan's tribal wilds along the border with Afghanistan have
wrought havoc on both sides of that frontier, and that mountainous
strip has produced two attacks that shook Pakistan to the core: the
assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 26, 2007 and the Sept. 20
blast that destroyed the heavily defended Marriott Hotel in the
capital, killing up to 60 people. The terror strikes punctuated a
rolling series of crises in Pakistan.
Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was elected President in a
democratic poll that ended the political career of Pervez Musharraf,
the general on whom Washington had relied as
a bulwark against the burgeoning al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in his
country, as well as home-grown extremists like Baitullah Mehsud. The
Marriott bombing drove home the fact that the terror threat most
Pakistanis had assumed was directed solely at the West was also
aimed at their nuclear-armed but economically hobbled Muslim nation.
Still, that didn't help Zardari persuade his Parliament to back the
war on terror, as Pakistan's legislature continued to
demand negotiations with the militants. The Marriott bombing was a
reminder that the wild frontier between
Pakistan
and Afghanistan remains a fount of menace not only to Afghanistan and the West but also to Pakistan.
(Sept. 20)
[SOURCE 9]
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