While no official determination has been made thus far regarding the group responsible for the attack, analysts and officials in Lahore and elsewhere in Pakistan opine that evidence on the ground points to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or some other al Qaeda affiliate, possibly including the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) or the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). At the time of writing, preliminary investigations into the attack have suggested that LeT militants, who went underground after an apparent crackdown on the group in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attack in November 2008, may have carried out the assault. Leaks after the initial probe suggested that a group of "headstrong" LeT cadres, who went underground and hid in the garrison city of Rawalpindi after Government action against the terrorist group and its front organization, the Jama’at-ud-Da’awa, had acted on its own and carried out the attack. However, all of this remains speculative at the moment, and the character of the attack and of the Security Forces’ (SFs) response leave many suspicions unaddressed.

Apart from the fact that the Lahore attack itself reflected a humongous security failure, the incident irreversibly destroyed the immunity sports in general, and especially cricket – an enormously popular sport in the sub-continent – had hitherto enjoyed. Clearly, the militants can now attack any soft target, anywhere.

Emboldened by the state’s capitulation in Swat, the militants will certainly make similar and other demonstrations elsewhere in Pakistan in order to progressively establish their writ. The Taliban – al Qaeda combine can also be expected, in the proximate future, to increasingly attack the heartlands of Punjab, the Army’s conventional stronghold and the country’s most populous province. With Pakistan’s Security Forces gradually losing their will to fight amidst desertions, fatigue and a refusal to ‘kill their own’, the state will increasingly be forced to seek ‘compromises’. It is abundantly clear, now, that the jihadi who now dominates the NWFP and FATA, will look to control Pakistan in the proximate future.

While the guns have fallen relatively silent in the Swat Valley, there violence continues elsewhere in the NWFP and across Pakistan. Violence and subversion are now crystallizing as a natural consequence of the state of play in FATA and Swat. While the progressive collapse in NWFP and FATA is well documented, it is Punjab that is, in many ways, emerging as a jihadi hub. 304 persons, including 257 Security Force (SF) personnel and 34 civilians, were killed in 78 terrorism-related incidents in Punjab in 2008. The fact that more civilians and SF personnel were killed in Punjab than militants, gives a clear indication that the Islamist terrorist networks are securing an upper hand. Out of the approximately 78 incidents in 2008, 21 were reported from Islamabad and 22 from Lahore. 49 persons, including 34 civilians and 14 SF personnel, have died so far in Punjab in 22 incidents in 2009 (including six in Lahore and one in Islamabad. Data till March 8).

Southern Punjab has always been a base for a mélange of jihadi groups. For long, it has hosted groups such as the LeT, JeM, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), LeJ, Harkat-ul-Ansar, Hizbul Tahrir, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Tehreek-e-Jaferia Pakistan (TJP) and Sipah-e-Mohammed Pakistan (SMP). Furthermore, militants from across Pakistan and outside easily find safe haven in places like Lahore and Islamabad. Peshawar, the NWFP capital which is just 150 kilometers away from Islamabad, is already under militant siege, and Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi are increasingly being targeted. While one suicide attack has occurred in the current year in Punjab, there were 12 during 2008. In addition, security agencies successfully neutralized many suicide modules. At least 53 ‘potential suicide bombers’ and 16 linkmen were arrested in 2008 from places including Lahore, Sargodha, Rawalpindi, Jhang, Islamabad, and Sialkot, an indication of the substantial pool of fidayeen (suicide cadres) who could inflict mayhem not only in Punjab, but across Pakistan.

Even as the Islamist extremists hold territory and control in the NWFP and FATA, through violence or otherwise, the Taliban – al Qaeda combine is expected to activate sleeper cells in the madrassa network of south Punjab in order to increase violence in Punjab. Pakistan’s urban heartland, including the national capital Islamabad, the Punjab capital Lahore, and the garrison town of Rawalpindi, the Sindh capital, Karachi, and other towns, can be expected to come under increasing and continuous attack. An indication of the gravity of the situation was visible in the report of the Karachi Police’s Crime Investigation Department (CID) Special Branch, which stated that the Taliban "could take the city hostage at any point". The report warned that the Taliban network was spreading across Pakistan so briskly that it may be on course to strike the financial and shipping hub of Karachi. The Taliban has established hideouts in Karachi, the report said, adding that militants have "huge caches" of arms and ammunition and could strike, possibly in a manner similar to the Mumbai attacks of November 26. The report mentions Taliban hideouts and their presence in areas like Sohrab Goth and Quaidabad. Besides living in small motels in these areas, the Taliban are hiding in the hills of Manghopir and Orangi town, and in other low-income areas and slums, Daily Times quoted the Police report as stating. The Taliban’s systematic infiltration of Karachi has led to the hills on the outskirts of the city, slums and small motels, becoming militant hubs. Sources disclosed that the ‘deputy chief’ of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Hasan Mahmood, was reportedly hiding in Karachi.

Pakistan is not merely an increasingly violent state, it is also increasingly ungovernable. With the state capitulation in the Frontier and the deepening of multiple conflicts, the political stand-off between President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief in a fragile democracy, can only complicate the situation. Any loss or diminution of state control across the board is now synonymous with jihadi ascendancy. Worse, the once-omnipotent Armed Forces have their own demons to tame, and there is already much talk about an impending Army putsch in Pakistan.

There are clearly no easy solutions in Pakistan. The rules of global engagement will have to be radically recast, if the country’s rapid collapse is to be averted. Mere declarations that Pakistan is facing a serious internal security threat and calling the Lahore attack an ‘eerie replica’ of the Mumbai attacks, as US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton did, can hardly suffice. The global community, led by USA, the most dominant interlocutor in the region, will have to recognize the dangers of ‘business as usual’ while dealing with augmenting crisis that is Pakistan. The top US diplomat in Kabul, Christopher Dell, rightly warned, on March 4, that Pakistan constituted a far greater security challenge to America and the world than Afghanistan:

From where I sit [Pakistan] sure looks like it’s going to be a bigger problem… Pakistan is a bigger place, has a larger population, its nuclear-armed… It has certainly made radical Islam a part of its political life, and it now seems to be a deeply ingrained element of its political culture. It makes things there very hard.

Dell also noted that there were signs that the rate of infiltration of insurgents across the frontier from Pakistan’s Tribal Areas had increased, possibly as a result of cease-fire deals between the Taliban and the Pakistani Government. "Every time the Pakistanis have signed a peace deal, two things happen," Dell said, adding "There is an uptick in the fighting on this [the Afghan] side, and the peace deals have fallen apart quickly. We think we’ve already seen an increase of fighters crossing the border."

Three principal militant leaders in FATA have settled their differences and formed a united front, the Shura Ittihad-ul-Mujahideen (Council of United Holy Warriors) to focus on launching attacks in Afghanistan. This front (formally announced on February 22) comprises the groups led by the ‘central chief’ of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baitullah Mehsud, and the two reportedly pro-Government commanders, Maulvi Nazir of South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur of North Waziristan. The three, according to sources, met at an undisclosed location and decided to resolve their differences to foil the designs of ‘external forces’ to create divisions between the various Taliban factions based in Pakistan. A 13-member executive council has been constituted to run the affairs of the new front. The Shura subsequently issued a pamphlet that vowed to target the al Qaeda’s three enemies: "Obama, Zardari and Karzai". Interestingly, the TTP subsequently announced that it would no longer fight the Pakistan Army.

Major General John MacDonald, the new deputy commander of US forces in Afghanistan, told The Guardian on March 4 that the militants were "most dangerous when they begin to collaborate with one another… We think we have already seen an increase in the number of fighters coming across the border particularly in the Kunar area right opposite Bajaur." He predicted that the coming surge in the number of coalition troops in Afghanistan would lead to an increase in fighting, "So yes, this summer you will see more violence… We’re just about to kick a beehive."

The Lahore attack underlines the reality that Pakistan is a dysfunctional state. The country’s leadership, however, remains willfully blind and, as the Pakistani newspaper Dawn noted, living in a state of denial is fast becoming "a Pakistani specialty". Ejaz Haider notes, further,

The worst thing that can happen to a state is to go into denial. How long will we deny that we have groups that have run amok and whose obvious agenda involves destroying Pakistan as a nation-state? These are ideologically motivated millenarians, ahistorical in their approach and literalist in their outlook. They are trained, and societal attitudes transformed over three decades allow them to find recruits with alarming ease. To point to India (‘khufia haath’ – hidden hand) without bothering to look at other evidence for which we now have a long trajectory, is not simply ignorance; it is deliberate perfidy.

The network of Islamist extremists in Pakistan is working to create a strategic vacuum across large areas of the country, within which they hope, eventually, to capture power. While the jihadis focus on escalating internal chaos, situational factors, including the current political stand-off, an inept and compromised leadership and a worsening economic crisis, enormously creates widening opportunities for disorder.

Pakistan has long been thought to be on the threshold of state failure. The Foreign Policy Failed State Index, for instance, showed Pakistan at the 9th rank among nations most at risk in 2008, up from 34th in 2005. While international efforts to stabilize the country are urgently needed, these must be located within a far more realistic framework than the well-intentioned and wishful interventions of the past, which sought a transformation through large infusions of unconditional aid. It is time, indeed, for the world to prepare for the possible and proximate collapse or radical transformation of Pakistan. Ajai Sahni notes,

Three probable scenarios present themselves in Pakistan’s menacing endgame. The first of these would see a progression along the present trajectory, towards augmenting disorders and eventual anarchy, as central power is eroded and increasingly randomised in the hands of non-state, principally Islamist, entities, contested locally by proxies of the surviving central authority. The second could result in the abrupt collapse of the central authority, with an Islamist takeover of degraded state institutions and the imposition of a Talibanised order reminiscent of much of Afghanistan in the end 1990s, with its authority contested along wide regions in unrelenting attritional warfare. The third possible outcome could see an Iran-like shift, with the overwhelming proportion of the Pakistan Army simply transferring allegiance to the mullahs, eliminating the small remaining secular segment within the military leadership, to forge a new radical partnership, once again, to create a Talibanised order, backed by the surviving power of the Armed Forces and armed Islamist militant groupings. In each of these cases, externally directed Islamist terrorism would gain tremendous momentum, even as the danger of the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction augments exponentially.

The collapse of the Pakistani state and the dangerous ramifications of a Talibanesque extremist regime in control of the nuclear button are no longer figments of an overactive imagination. It is evident that the Taliban – al Qaeda combine seeks to reduce Pakistan to the status of a captive territory from where it can launch and sustain its global jihad. It is evident that the current establishment in Pakistan lacks both the capacity and the will to effectively contest and contain this enterprise. It is evident, equally, that neither the South Asian neighbourhood nor the principal external powers with capacities to intervene in the region have a coherent strategy to alter the evolving trajectory of events. Unless the entire approach to Pakistan undergoes a fundamental and decisive reinvention, Pakistan can only fulfill its manifest destiny as a global catastrophe.

The writer is a Research Fellow at Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi, India.

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