{"id":284,"date":"2009-03-27T07:15:43","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T07:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/pakistan-mosque-bombing.html"},"modified":"2009-03-27T07:15:43","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T07:15:43","slug":"pakistan-mosque-bombing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/03\/pakistan-mosque-bombing.html","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan mosque bombing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A suicide bomber atttack at a mosque<\/a> in the frontier town of Jamrud, Pakistan has destroyed the building and killed dozens of people during Friday prayers:<\/p>\n

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque packed with hundreds of
\nworshippers for Friday prayers in northwestern Pakistan, killing at
\nleast 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said.<\/p>\n

The blast badly damaged the mosque in Jamrud, a town near the Afghan border in an area beset by Taliban
\nattacks as well as vicious feuds between rival tribes and militant
\ngroups. Authorities did not immediately speculate on a motive.<\/p>\n

Rising
\nviolence in Pakistan’s northwest is fueling doubts about the country’s
\nability to counter Taliban and al-Qaida militants also blamed for
\nattacks in neighboring Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Television footage showed
\nscores residents and police officers digging frantically through the
\nruins of the white-walled mosque, whose roof appeared to have caved in.<\/p>\n

The bomber struck when about 250 people were attending Friday prayers, said Tariq Hayat, the top administrator in the area.<\/p>\n

He
\nsaid rescuers had pulled 48 bodies from the rubble and predicted the
\ntoll would likely rise further. Another 80 people were injured, he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As the NYT notes, Jamrud is in the Khyber semi-autonomous tribal region of Pakistan, home of the famed Khyber Pass<\/a> between Pakistan and Afghanistan and thus the primary land route to supply US and NATO troops in Afghanistan for goods arriving at the port in Karachi. in other words, an irresistible target for militants<\/a> of all stripes. The region also has its share of other horrific atrocities like child slavery<\/a>. All of this is further evidence ot the fact that the Afghanistan war is not a hermetically sealed one, and that any progress there can be easily undermined by the situation in Pakistan. Any long term solution will have to include Pakistan as well. <\/p>\n

I am sympathetic to Pakistan’s need for sovereign authority but in regions like Khyber, or in Swat, the authority of the central government is basically meaningless anyway. As a result, the US can and must play an active role. <\/p>\n

As an aside, the strategic bottleneck of the Khyber Pass – which draws and exacerbates militant resistance – is one that the military would prefer to avoid reliance on. Alternate routes for land supply into Afghanistan are few, however – though one possibility would be via Iran, justifying rapprochement. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A suicide bomber atttack at a mosque in the frontier town of Jamrud, Pakistan has destroyed the building and killed dozens of people during Friday prayers: A suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers for Friday prayers in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[156,57,218,26],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hirabah-watch","tag-afghanistan","tag-iran","tag-pakistan","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nPakistan mosque bombing - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pakistan mosque bombing - 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Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}