Terrorits Know Their Targets

Usually one gets the "misguided people" argument in debates about who the terrorists are and what they really want. The terrorists intelligence along with their targets and tactics are down played by their apologists. But the terrorists know exactly what they are doing and how they're doing it.

I wrote about the Gen. Musharraf's real ally based on events leading up to attack on Lal Masjid and Howard French's article. Writing about his friend Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the slain terror leader in the apparent basement of Lal Masjid, Nicholas Schmidle also time-lines the non-responses and final response of the general and Pakistan establishment to the increasing extremists activities in their own backyard.

Soon after that, Ghazi and his brother, Maulana Abdul Aziz, began an anti-vice campaign in Islamabad. They started by kidnapping a brothel owner, dressing her in a black burqa and forcing her to repent at a news conference. When a Western reporter asked Ghazi whether his anti-vice activities signaled the "Talibanization" of Pakistan, he replied, "Rudy Giuliani, when he became mayor of New York, closed the brothels. Was that also Talibanization?" Meanwhile, President Pervez Musharraf's government stood by and did nothing. A few weeks later, plainclothes police officers drifted too close to the mosque, and the local Taliban kidnapped them as well. On April 6, after Friday prayers, worshipers from Lal Masjid blocked a road and lit a bonfire using a pile of un-Islamic CDs and DVDs as kindling. Musharraf's response? Still nothing. But in late May, Ghazi's vigilantes pushed their luck when they snatched six Chinese women from a massage parlor in Islamabad and held them hostage for a day. Beijing pressured Musharraf to protect Chinese citizens, and finally the noose tightened. [My Buddy, The Jihadi - WP]

After the bloody Lal Masjid blow, the terrorists are striking back at the general and his establishment with targets in terror safe haven in NWFP and against the real ally in Islamabad.

ISLAMABAD: Two suicide bombers killed more than 33 people in Pakistan on Thursday, as attacks on government forces continued in the aftermath of a bloody eight-day siege at the Red Mosque complex. At least 26 people were killed when a car bomber, apparently aiming at a convoy of Chinese mining technicians and engineers, rammed into a police van that was escorting them in the southern town of Hub, news services reported. About 30 more people were wounded. The Chinese workers were unhurt, but all seven police officers in the van were killed, Reuters reported. Hub is a town in Baluchistan province near the port city of Karachi. Another seven people, including some police officers, were killed in a car bomb attack at a police academy in the northwestern city of Hangu, in the region near the Afghan border where support for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants is widespread. [Violence intensifies in Pakistan... - IHT]

The question now would be how will the apparent next super power respond?