February 19, 2007 ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ Security
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
As Chandra Dulam wrote over at INI Signal, it is The Hindu’s Praveen Swami who has the most insightful commentary on the Delhi-Attari Express carnage. The jihadi establishment in Pakistan has been up in arms ever since Gen Musharraf signaled that Pakistan never had a claim on Kashmir.
Pakistan’s jihadi press holds out clues to what the motives of the terrorists who attacked the Samjhauta Express might have been.
Magazines like Ghazwa and Zarb-e-Taiba are required reading for Lashkar cadre — a fact that makes it possible that the perpetrators of the bombing intended to “educate” audiences in Pakistan. Another possibility is that the Samjhauta Express bombers hoped to retaliate against the construction of dams in Jammu and Kashmir — an action the jihadi press has marketed as an existential threat to Pakistan. Last week, a World Bank-appointed arbitrator ruled on the construction of the Baghliar Dam. In a February 15 press release, Lashkar political chief Abdul Rahman Makki claimed “India cannot build any dams at all on the Chenab River according to the stipulations of the Sindh-Taas Agreement.” Mr. Makki claimed that the Baghliar Dam was being built because Pakistan’s “timid rulers are so terrified of India.” [The Hindu]The Acorn has argued that the Pakistani jihadi establishment, even its vociferously anti-Musharraf factions, form part of a continuum that comprises the Pakistani army/intelligence at one end, and the radical Islamist political parties at the other. The jihadi groups do not operate independently.
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