Al Qaeda type attacks hit Pakistan city

NY Times:

About 25 militants dressed in police uniforms simultaneously attacked three law enforcement agencies in Lahore on Thursday morning, the fifth major attack by militants in Pakistan in the last 10 days.

The assaults took place on the regional center of the Federal Investigation Agency and two police training centers just before 9:30 a.m. in Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province and Pakistan’s second most populous city.

More than 30 people were killed, including 19 police officers and at least 11 militants, police officials said.

The coordinated attacks, the most sophisticated in a wave that began this month, threw parts of Lahore into chaos. Officials in the capital, Islamabad, expressed dismay and surprise that another assault was under way, aimed specifically at the nation’s struggling law enforcement apparatus.

The attacks appeared to be timed ahead of a planned offensive by the Pakistani Army against the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, and appeared intended to send an ominous signal that the militants were daring the army to come and get them.

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The style of the assaults, Mr. Hussain said, also seemed to demonstrate that the new Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, remained aligned closely to Al Qaeda and was receiving technical training, planning and support for the attacks from the terrorist organization. Baitullah Mehsud, the previous Taliban leader, was killed in an American missile strike in August.

In one of the attacks, five militants scaled the wall of an elite police training center, said Maj. Gen. Shafqat Ahmed, the officer commanding security forces in Lahore. One attacker was killed and another detonated a suicide bomb. The three surviving militants then tried to move inside a residential compound, but families locked themselves inside while commandos fired on the assailants. Six police officers were killed and seven were wounded, police officials said. Five of the attackers were killed, they said.

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Pakistan needs to attack Hakimullah with more urgency than it has shown to date. He and his organization need to be destroyed and the sooner the better. The government made a mistake by tipping its hand about the coming offensive. Perhaps they thought that it would lead more non combatants to leave the area, but that does not appear to be happening.

It needs to begin the assault in a way that ties down Taliban and al Qaeda forces and makes this type of attack much more difficult for them. It also needs to do a better job of cutting off the area controlled by the Taliban which would make this kind of movement to contact much more difficult.

Strategically, this type of attack is more a media event than one of consequence. The Taliban are not going to be able to seize control of the area under attack and they are not going to be able to change government policy. It is basically a mass murder for Allah attack that waste troops on both sides. Since the government has more resources, the Taliban are weakening themselves much more by the attacks and also alienating the population.