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Just another day at the office for
Musharraf
By Breffni O'Rourke
Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf
has escaped injury in the latest apparent assassination
attempt against him. A powerful bomb detonated shortly
after his motorcade drove over a bridge Monday in the
northern city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. The
president was passing after a visit to the southern port
city of Karachi. Whoever planted the explosive device
beside the road had prior knowledge of the president's
movements.
Musharraf has no doubt that he was
the target of the blast. He told Pakistani television:
"There was an explosion just half a minute or one minute
after we crossed [the Amar Chowk bridge]. I felt the
explosion in my car. That is all that I know except, of
course, that it was certainly a terrorist act and
certainly it was me who was targeted."
In other
comments to journalists, he blamed religious and
sectarian extremists, saying that the greatest danger to
Pakistan came from internal rather than foreign sources.
This is the latest of several attempts to kill
Musharraf since he assumed power in a bloodless military
coup in October 1999. Only two months ago, three Islamic
militants of the al-Almi faction of the Harkat-ul
Mujahideen were sentenced to long prison terms for
trying to assassinate the president last year. After
Monday's attack, Musharraf took a philosophical view. "I
am used to such incidents," he said. "They have happened
before also. One doesn't get bothered. I think that God
is great and one has to trust in God, and there's no
problem."
Musharraf has increasingly become a
target for Islamic militant groups since he turned
against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and sided with
the United States after the September 11 terror attacks
on New York and Washington in 2001.
No one has
claimed responsibility for Monday's attempt. If
Musharraf was the target, it is impossible to know at
this stage whether the perpetrators are opposed to the
president's stand against the Taliban or his stance
concerning the dispute between Muslims and Hindus over
the divided territory of Kashmir. The attackers could
also have been angered by Musharraf's decision in
November to ban six militant Islamic groups.
In
Islamabad, Pakistani security analyst Talat Masood told
Reuters that the death of the president would have
created a power vacuum in the country, but nevertheless
there are lessons to be learned from the incident.
"I think he [Musharraf] is playing a very key
role, there is no doubt about that, and he is a very key
player, both externally and internally at the moment. So
his loss would be great. But nevertheless there is no
such thing as indispensability, and so this is a lesson
for Pakistan and for the present leadership that they
should try to strengthen institutions rather than
individuals," Masood said.
In Paris, French
Islamic expert Olivier Roy says that the attack is most
probably connected with the Taliban's struggle against
the US-led coalition in Afghanistan. He says that the
Pakistani government finds itself in a quandary, trying
to respond to such terror attacks.
"Of course,
they are trying to find the extremists, but the
government has always avoided a general crackdown on
religious militants, the government does not want a
direct confrontation [with them], so they deal as best
they can, hoping that no terrorist attack will really
succeed, but it is a very, very dangerous game," Roy
said.
Roy says that he does not feel that the
capture by US forces in Iraq of ousted Iraqi president
Saddam Hussein will change the balance of forces in
Pakistan. "There is a strong anti-American feeling in
Pakistan, but Saddam Hussein is not an Islamic hero, you
know, I would say the religious extremists are closer to
[al-Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden than to Saddam
Hussein," he said.
Roy added that Pakistani
militants who side with the ousted Taliban in
Afghanistan are interested in ensuring that the
political and economic situation of Afghanistan does not
improve under the US-led coalition. On the contrary,
they are counting on a worsening of the situation there.
As for Kashmir, Roy said: "The real issue for
Pakistan is Kashmir - the problem for Musharraf is that
he is stuck. If he makes some [diplomatic] opening
towards India then he will be criticized by the
religious militants. If he does not do anything, then
Kashmir will still remain a sort of training ground for
the extremists - so it is an impossible situation."
Investigators have detained at least seven
people for questioning following the Rawalpindi attack.
At least three are police officers who were supposed to
have been on duty at the bridge at the time.
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
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