Pakistan suffers worst year of terrorist violence
By Saeed Shah

Pakistan suffered its worst year of terrorist violence last year, with more than 3,000 people reported to have been killed as an al-Qaeda-inspired insurgency targeted civilians and destabilized the country.

The toll from the violence in Pakistan far outstripped the bloodshed in neighbouring Afghanistan, according to research by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (Pips).

It found that 3,021 people had been killed and 7,334 injured in terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2009. There were 87 suicide bombings out of 2,586 incidents related to terrorism - a 45 per cent rise in attacks over the previous year. The scale of the terrorist challenge at home could explain Islamabad's resistance to US demands that Pakistan take on Afghan insurgents based on its soil in the border regions.

Pakistani forces struck back in the first concerted military response to Islamic extremism since the country sided with the US following the September 11 attacks. The armed forces claimed to have killed as many as 7,945 terrorists, but the claim cannot be independently verified.

Overall, Pips claimed that the numbers killed and injured in militancy-related violence, including the extremists, totalled 25,447 in Pakistan, eclipsing the 8,812 such casualties in Afghanistan.

"The most important trend to emerge was attacks on soft targets," said Abdul Basit, a researcher. "The distinction between combatants and non-combatants is gradually disappearing."

Pakistani extremists had been careful to limit their targets to the police and military but towards the end of 2009 purely civilian targets were also hit. Islamabad's International Islamic University and markets in the cities of Lahore and Peshawar saw bombings that horrified the nation.

The current extremist campaign in Pakistan started in the summer of 2007, after the military stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, a radical stronghold, killing about 100 people. Al-Qaeda seized on the attack to call for an Islamist rebellion in the country.

That insurrection led to the formation of a Pakistani Taliban movement which fought not in Afghanistan but at home, and which linked up with established militant groups across the country.
 

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