July 31, 2004 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s prime minister-to-be was nearly killed in a terrorist attack yesterday. As the Ejaz Haider writes, a protean al Qaeda has declared war on Pakistan. But General Musharraf, against whose disposition this war seems to be directed, is largely responsible for this turn of events. While he is able to pull the wool over American eyes with his duplicitous approach to tackling jihadi terrorism, he has been less successful with the jihadis themselves. His promises on tackling the roots of Islamic terrorism, including reform of the madrassa system and a clean-up of various jihadi outfits, are yet to be redeemed. With more than three years of untrammelled power, he has few excuses for his negligence.
In fact, given Musharraf’s manipulation of Pakistani politics, it is difficult to distinguish this attack from being a motivated by a simple political opposition to Musharraf’s regime or by a more sinister al Qaeda-like agenda. After all, it is not uncommon for figures from the political opposition to be bumped off.
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