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| India-Pakistan |
| Militants reassert themselves post-polls |
| 2008-03-06 |
| After a lull during the general elections, militants have reasserted themselves with a string of deadly suicide blasts that have killed more than 80 people, including an army general and tribal leaders fed up with the violence. “This crisis is something that they have to respond to. I don’t think they can just sit pretty and think things are normal” once they have control of the government, said political analyst Nasim Zehra. The February 18 elections went off without a major terrorist attack, allowing the secular, pro-Western Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), to savor their victory. But militants have since lashed out with a series of grim suicide attacks on security forces and community leaders who will be central to any new push by the new government. Benazir’ s PPP and Nawaz’s PML-N insist they are committed to fighting extremism. Dialogue offer: Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for the PPP, said it would not bow to suicide attacks that were “a deliberate attempt to destabilise and discourage the democratic government that will soon be taking over. They are trying to nullify the results of the election.” He reiterated his party’s offer of dialogue with the militants -but only to those who renounced violence. “For those who have taken up arms against the state, there is no negotiations with them ... the use of force is not ruled out,” Babar said. But he acknowledged that the parties expected to form the new government have yet to discuss the matter. Redefining: Nawaz has called for the war on terror to be redefined to dispel the perception of many Pakistanis that it is being waged only at America’s behest. However, he has yet to detail how, if at all, his approach differs from that of the current government. Under Musharraf, the country launched a series of large-scale military operations against militant strongholds near the Afghan border. But it also struck peace accords that US officials complain allowed Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup. Pakistani and US officials are now working on delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid to the border region in a bid to build support for the government. Naseem Zehra says Musharraf’s counterinsurgency policy contained many of the right elements, but had appeared to be driven by short-term American concerns, leaving the public confused and increasingly cynical. She said the PPP and the PML-N would be more sensitive to public opinion and forecast that once in office they would try to quickly draw up a more effective approach, also because of international concern about Pakistan’s stability |
| Posted by:Fred |