Asia Times: India/Pakistan


	June 15, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Karachi blast plays into US hands
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - At a time when Pakistani investigators, along with US intelligence agents, are tracking down al-Qaeda suspects in Karachi, a second suicide attack in just over a month in the city left at least eight people dead and dozens injured on Friday after a car exploded outside the US Consulate.

The incident, which follows on a car bomb attack last month in which 11 French nationals and three Pakistanis died, is expected to strengthen the hand of the US in seeking permission to step up its action in the country against al-Qaeda, who US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on a visit to Islamabad this week were known to be operating in the Kashmir Valley.

"No one among the consulate officials or staffers was killed or injured in the blast," said retired Brigadier Mukhtar Shiekh, home secretary of Sindh province. Police said the bomb was concealed in a white car that the driver (who died) crashed into a police guard hut at the southern end of the consulate compound, destroying part of the heavy concrete wall. It also damaged the nearby Marriott Hotel, shattered windows in buildings a block away and incinerated more than a dozen parked cars.

"I question what benefit al-Qaeda will secure from his kind of attack. If they are really in Pakistan, this sort of operation will make their work difficult. I see a foreign hand, probably of the Indian RAW [Research and Analysis Wing] to show Pakistan as a destabilized country," said a senior political analyst and editor of the Star newspaper, Kamal Majidullah.

However, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity that the two suicide attacks in Karachi - the first ever in the country - had been executed in a similar manner, and were in turn copies of the August 1998 attack on the US Embassy in Nairobi that left hundreds of people dead. The officer said Karachi police had been tipped off about a week ago, and they were working to track down that lead.

Pakistani intelligence sources say they have been under mounting pressure from the US to follow up possible al-Qaeda connections in Karachi after the recent arrest in the United States of Abdullah al-Muhajir, a Muslim convert, after his return from Pakistan on suspicion of plotting to set off a radiological "dirty" bomb in the US. The suspect is believed to have divulged that he met two senior al-Qaeda men in Karachi.

Friday's blast is expected to have an impact on the tense regional situation, especially in view of the United States' stated desire of becoming more engaged militarily, as they are in Afghanistan, in tracking down terrorists, most notably in Kashmir.

The US already has a limited presence in Waziristan agency in Pakistani tribal belt, aimed at preventing the exodus of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

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