Another Suicide Bombing in Pakistan and Foreign Fighters Stream In To Afghanistan

Musharraf is going to get a lot of people killed by his constant flip flopping on dealing with the Islamists and Taliban in the volatile regions of Pakistan. He might want to include himself in that body count.

A suicide bomber killed seven people at a checkpoint not far from where Musharraf was staying.

A suicide attacker set off a bomb at a checkpoint a quarter-mile from the military headquarters where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was staying Tuesday, killing seven people, police said.

The blast will likely feed fears for the country's stability just as it prepares for crucial parliamentary elections and faces a growing threat from Islamic militants.

The man walked up to the checkpoint in the city of Rawalpindi a quarter-mile from Army House. Musharraf was safely inside at the time, his spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.

Police said three of their officers and four civilians were killed along with the lone assailant. Fourteen policemen and four civilians were wounded, he said.

"When police officers asked him to halt, the attacker got panicked. And as the police tried to capture him, he blew himself up," city police chief Saud Aziz told The Associated Press. "Our officers died to protect the citizens of Pakistan."

Musharraf had announced only yesterday that he was cutting deals with the Islamists in the NWFP. Will we see yet another about face as he calls for a harsh crackdown against the Islamists?

I suspect we will, albeit a short lived crackdown, until he finds a reason to appease and cut deals with the same groups that seek his death.

His inability to follow through on cracking down on the Islamists and the Taliban is going to get a whole lot of people killed.

Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan continues to be precarious as foreign fighters stream in to the country to fight alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

Is this going to be a last stand for the Taliban and al Qaeda? More to the point, will the NATO forces go hard after these foreign fighters and Taliban instead of playing nice? That strategy, largely followed by the European contingent, has led to the Taliban resurgence in parts of the country, while the US strategy of going on an aggressive offensive has killed Taliban by the scores.

The situation in Pakistan continues to threaten the stability in Afghanistan.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

A lax military effort by NATO doesn't help matters either. What is needed is a concerted effort by NATO, the US, Afghan and Pakistani forces to close and engage these Taliban remnants along with the foreign fighters to eliminate their safe havens once and for all.

The main problem is that Musharraf is apparently incapable of holding the line on the Taliban, and his military has taken heavy losses in fighting with the Islamists. In order to secure the NWFP, Warizistan and the bordering Afghan provinces, the Taliban have to be trapped with no way to escape. Cutting deals and a failure to vigorously prosecute the fight enables the Taliban to simply slip away to fight another day and/or regroup and rearm with the foreign fighters streaming into the region.