Pakistani Taliban flex muscles at Pakistan army headquarter (Feature)

By Nadeem Sarwar Oct 11, 2009, 14:48 GMT

Rawalpindi, Pakistan - Sounds of explosions and firing rang out and the blood splattered around. It had never happened before at the headquarters of world's sixth largest military might - the Pakistan Army.

The chief of the around 600,000-strong military was evacuated for his security from his head office and the soldiers and officers rushed around in panic to save their own lives.

Only nine Taliban militants, armed with assault rifles, hand grenades, landmines and a single suicide jacket, raided the army base in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Saturday and held more than 40 hostages there for around 22 hours.

This caused concern among the international community about the safety of some 100 nuclear warheads the country possesses.

The brazen attack came as Pakistani and US authorities were cheering the death of Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, killed in a drone attack in Pakistan's rugged, mountainous tribal region that borders Afghanistan in early August.

They declared the killing to be a huge success in the fight against terrorism.

Dressed as regular soldiers, five militants riding in a white van with fake military number plate reached the forward post outside the army headquarters by around Saturday midday.

They lobbed hand grenades and opened fire with assault rifles, but mainly to attract the troops from the second post who joined the colleagues in the fight.

Five militants died there while killing four soldiers and passers- by. But another group of assailants managed to sneak into a security building just near the main gate.

'We heard the blasts and firing and we were shaken,' said a military official who works at the administration office in the headquarters.

'First we thought we were attacked by the Indian or the Americans but later we came to know that it were Taliban,' said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'The army chief was attending a meeting but he was immediately evacuated with other senior commanders to some safer place as the protocol requires.'

Threatening more than 22 military and civilian personnel at the security office with a suicide vest that an attacker was wearing, the militants forced them to stay in a room.

Around a dozen were held hostage at another room while others hid under the tables and in the cupboards to emerge only after the rescue operation was over on Sunday morning.

'It's funny. We heard Pakistani officials saying that Taliban's back was broken by Mehsud's death, but can someone with a broken back carry out such a well-planned and well-organized attack on military headquarters,' asked Masood Sharif, the former chief of the civilian Intelligence Bureau.

'Making such claims is fashionable, but these do not match with the reality,' he added. 'George Bush (the former US president) made an announcement on years back that the war in Iraq has been won. Iraq is still burning. So is the case in Pakistan.'

Pakistan has been pursuing a policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds since it joined the international alliance against terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

Pretending to eliminate the terrorists, it gained billions of dollars in aid from Western countries. But in practical terms, the Taliban established more safe-havens in tribal areas to launch lethal attacks on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

With some arrests and killing here and there, the top al-Qaeda leadership survived inside Pakistan with the collaboration of elements in Pakistani intelligence agencies.

Many of their officers are deeply influenced by the Jihad philosophy practiced at state-level during its support of Afghan warriors fighting against Soviet invasion in 1980s.

This policy has created a monster that has turned on its creator. Thousands of security officials and civilians have died in the suicide bombings that make no distinction between fighter and non- fighter. But Pakistan remains perplexed what to do about it.

As the Taliban regrouped after the death of their chief by naming his clansman Hakimullah Mehsud as his successor, Pakistan was unable to launch a decisive action to wipe out between 10,000 and 15,000 of his followers in South Waziristan, in a brief opportunity.

Instead, it has made repeated public proclamations for the last three months about launching an operation 'soon,' apparently to satisfy Western countries demanding an all-out assault.

'This is policy that is destined to fail,' said a former security chief in the tribal region and an analyst now Mehmood Sha. 'If you want to hit you just hit, you don't make announcements about it just to notify the rival make good preparations for it.'

'When you give them enough time for preparation they hit you before you do,' he added. 'This is what happened in the attack on military headquarters.'

It became a great embarrassment for Pakistan's military which has always claimed that it had the ability to handle the militants.

'I have no idea what to say about this,' said a shopkeeper in Rawalpindi's neighborhood Lal Kurti, located barely a kilometer from the military headquarters.

'These people (soldiers) cannot defend themselves, so how they would defend us,' added Tariq Nadeem.