Yesterday (Sept 21), twin suicide-bomb blasts at a Church in Peshawar killed at least 80 people and injured more than 140. The dead included 34 women and 7 children. The death toll may go up as many of the injured are in critical condition.
The attack on the All Saints Anglican Church in the predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Kohati Gate was designed to inflict maximum casualties. It was launched around 11 a.m. as some 600 parishioners were leaving Sunday morning mass and beginning to gather on the lawn outside the church for a free meal.
According to reports, the two bombers gunned down two policemen posted outside the church grounds. One subsequently detonated a bomb strapped to his vest, when confronted by a security guard outside the church. The other proceeded inside, and detonated his bomb. Preliminary investigation suggests at least six kilograms of explosives were used and indicate that the bombs contained ball bearings and other metal objects so as to maximize casualties.
A representative of Jundullah, one of the Sunni fundamentalist militia that make up the Pakistan Taliban, contacted several foreign-based news agencies, including the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France Presse (AFP), to claim responsibility for the attack.
Identified as Ahmad Marwat, the Jundullah spokesman said the attack had been carried out in retaliation for US drone strikes. “We carried out the suicide bombings at Peshawar church,” Marwat told the AFP, “and will continue to strike foreigners and non-Muslims until drone attacks stop.”
Reuters cited Marwat as saying, “(The Christians) are the enemies of Islam; therefore, we target them. We will continue our attacks on non-Muslims on Pakistani land.”
Earlier this month an all-party conference chaired by newly-elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, had agreed to offer the Pakistan Taliban peace talks. But in the wake of Sunday’s bombing, Sharif signalled that the offer of negotiations is being rescinded.
“Such incidents are not conducive (for peace talks),” Sharif said while en route to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. “Unfortunately, because of this, the government is unable to move forward on what it had envisaged, on what it had wished for.”
The Pakistani army, which for decades patronized Sunni fundamentalist militia as a domestic and foreign policy tool, reportedly held a dim view of the government’s offer of negotiations; its opposition hardened after two senior army officers were killed in a roadside bombing near the Afghan border last week.
Speaking on September 16, the Army Chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said the Pakistan Taliban should not “take advantage of the military’s support to the political process.” “The army,” he continued, “has the ability and the will to take the fight to the terrorists.”
Members of Pakistan’s Christian minority have staged protests across the country including Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and the capital, Islamabad.
The protesters charged the authorities with failing to protect the Christian minority—echoing the complaints of Hazares and other members of the country’s Shia minority, who have been the target of mounting Sunni fundamentalist violence.
Representing about two percent of Pakistan’s population, Christians constitute one of the country’s most economically-deprived groups, with many housed in slum colonies. They have been frequent targets of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as well as sectarian violence.
Last March, police failed to come to the defence of the Christian residents of Lahore’s Joseph Colony when it was attacked by a mob of 1,000 people incited by accusations of blasphemy. More than 150 house and two churches were ransacked or destroyed by fire.
While Pakistan’s Christians have been the target of sectarian attacks in the past, Sunday’s bombing was by far the most deadly ever attack. It comes, however, within the context of mounting sectarian strife, most of its attributable to the Sunni fundamentalist militias, and widespread ethnic-political violence in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi. In the 18 months between January 2012 and June 2013 there were 203 attacks in Pakistan in which people were targeted because of their religion, resulting in 717 deaths, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The rise of sectarian violence in Pakistan can be traced back to General Zia’s US-backed dictatorship, which, at Washington’s urging, funnelled arms and money to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, while pursuing, with the help of the Saudi monarchy, an Islamacization policy at home that fuelled sectarian and ethnic strife.
-yamaaraar
