On July 25, eight small bombs exploded in quick succession across the south-Indian city of Bangalore, killing a woman and wounding at least 15 people.

So far the Indian police has few leads into the bombings. The Bangalore Commissioner of Police told the media that timer devices were used in all the bombs, and explosives were used in a quantity equal to one or two grenades. India’s Home Ministry said that it suspected “a small militant group” was behind the attacks, but has yet to give any details.
The next day, 16 blasts went off in Ahmedabad, resulting in more than 29 people getting killed and hundreds others injured. Mercifully, Pakistan and its premier intelligence agency, the ISI, have so far not been blamed. This is unlike the huge blast on July 7 at the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul, blame for which was laid at the door of the ISI by a person no less than the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Next in line was Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan who called for the destruction of the ISI. “We made this point, whenever we have had a chance … There might have been some tactical restraint for some time, obviously that restraint is no longer present,” Narayanan stated.
The Kabul blast was followed by several low-intensity explosions in the Pakhtun-dominated areas of Karachi which thankfully did not result in any deaths.
Hopefully, the above blasts in Kabul, Karachi and Bangalore are not interlinked and a consequence of internal turmoil. Nevertheless, there is now little doubt that India-Pakistan relations are again vulnerable despite the recent joint secretary-level talks in Islamabad, coupled with Pakistan adding 136 items to its positive list of imports from India in its 2008-09 trade policy and expressing an avowed interest in dealing with Indian traders and investors in several areas.
All these developments are not a good omen for Pakistan. They go to show the growing isolation of Pakistan in the international polity. It is high time the policymakers realized the folly of their policies and made necessary changes. There is in fact no harm in even publicly admitting the mistakes that the country made in certain arenas and showing the world and of course the citizens of Pakistan that adjustments have been made in relevant policies.
The government does not tire of stating that parliament is supreme but parliament is nowhere to be seen. This is the time to convene a session of the National Assembly and debate all these developments in detail. The country is increasingly seen by world leaders as a sanctuary for terrorists. The U.S. Secretary of State just the other day stated that Pakistan needs to do more in its north-western region to control the militants; she rejected the plea that the terrain is difficult to operate in. The recent killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. air strikes showed that the American-led war in Afghanistan is relentlessly spreading into Pakistan.
The B-1 heavy-bomber and F-15 attacks were called “self-defense” by the Americans but there are reports that U.S. and Pakistani troops engaged in a direct clash and heavy firefight that was ended by the American bombing. The U.S. hunter-killer drones, U.S. Special Forces and CIA teams have been launching attacks inside Fata. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been openly advocating major ground and air attacks by U.S. forces in Pakistan. American neoconservatives have been denouncing Pakistan as a ‘rogue state’ and a ‘sponsor of international terrorism’ and are calling for U.S. air and missile strikes against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and reactors.
The Indians have been accusing Pakistan for almost the past two decades for sponsoring and training the Kashmiri mujahideen who regularly hit targets inside Indian-occupied Kashmir. The Afghan president does not mince his words while holding his country’s biggest benefactor responsible for the “murder, killing, and the dishonoring of Afghans, and the resultant destruction and insecurity in the country.”
The irony is that Pakistanis are failing to realize this growing isolation of their country. They are becoming more angry with each American and Pakistan Army attack and do not see this whole campaign to suppress terrorism as their own battle; they see it as a foreign-sponsored war imposed on the country against its will. If this war is forced upon us by the Americans then it basically means that we condone whatever the militants are doing either in Afghanistan or Kashmir or for that matter even within our own country.
The militants for a number of years continued with the cruel practice of lining up Hindus in Indian-held Kashmir and spraying them with gunfire: the purpose was to force them to leave the territory and the militants succeeded to an extent in this endeavor. The Taleban are more ruthless, perhaps because non-Muslims are not so easily available and thus many a times take out their anger either in a sectarian manner or on people who refuse to cooperate with them.
The Pakistan government should come out openly with its policy regarding this campaign to control the growing Talebanization and put a stop to this menace. This oscillation between making radical statements while meeting American and European dignitaries and sounding like a soft Taleban when conferring with the Taleban leaders has led us to the present imbroglio and can be hardly expected to get us out of it. The whole state apparatus, including our military and intelligence agencies, should be united and speak with one voice so that the terrorists take the state seriously. Otherwise, the Taleban will employ the British tactic of ‘divide and rule’ and will continue to conquer.
(Source: Dawn