A little-known terror outfit has claimed responsibility for ramming an explosive-laden truck into the hotel blast in Peshawar. The News reported on June 10: “An organisation which calls itself Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade has claimed responsibility.” Dawn’s June 11 editorial says, “The devastating strike against the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar is another sobering reminder that the terrorists are continually adapting their modus operandi and probing gaps in security arrangements in what should be high-security areas. The attacks on the FIA centre in Lahore in March 2008 and the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last September introduced the devastation of truck-bombing to Pakistan.”

Taliban isolated

The tide seems to have turned against the Taliban leadership, who are being taken on by the locals who once deified them. As Daily Times puts it in its June 10 editorial: “The chief of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Baitullah Mehsud is under pressure... Disenchantment is setting in among the latter-day Taliban who joined Baitullah’s enterprise simply to fulfill their dreams of a ‘pure Islam’ to transform society into some sort of imagined utopia. After perceiving that the Taliban were on the run, a Taliban chief in Peshawar has also denounced Baitullah’s policies: “Whatever Baitullah Mehsud and his associates are doing in the name of Islam is not a jihad, and in fact it is rioting and terrorism”. The News reported on June 8: “Intensifying the offensive against the Taliban, the armed villagers in Dir Upper, backed by other villages, besieged the militants from all sides, killing six more of them......Negotiations were out of the question as the people were infuriated over the mosque attack and mass killings.”

... contd.