Trouble in Lahore

So called “gunmen” have attacked a police academy in Pakistan. Eleven innocent people, eight police and three civilians, have been killed.

Think this is India getting some revenge for the Mumbai attacks last year? That is too thriller-of-the-week for me to take seriously unless there is some evidence. Besides, there are enough Islamic terrorist groups wandering around inside Pakistan that you don’t need to go looking outside the country for someone pissed off enough to pull a stunt like this.

Strategypage has posted a pretty good essay concerning how the ISI, which is Pakistan’s intelligence services, has a very close working relationship with several terrorist groups. Seems the ISI political section was disbanded last year. It could be that this is some scheme put together by the spooks to prove to the new civilian government that they really need to give ISI a longer leash. But that is pretty thriller-of-the-week as well.

Some of the “gunmen” have been captured. I doubt they will keep any secrets for long.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

2 thoughts on “Trouble in Lahore”

  1. Ah, thanks for the clarification (seriously).

    And sorry for the snark, which I see was not merited. I also didn’t realize that the Indian gov’t or press was initially reporting the (wishfully) lower casualty figure.

    Some Pakistani journalists and internet commenters do seem (generalization ahead) prone to seeing the sinister hand of India whenever anything goes wrong in their country, and seem to discount any evidence that suggests that Pakistan might have its own home-grown problems and actors that have virtually nothing to do with the giant neighbor next door. To a westerner, this often seems like incredible blindness. Well, it is incredible blindness.

    Of course, a talented writer can take pretty much any set of facts and weave pretty much any story out of them, no matter how fantastic. With the help of the right set of filters (selective omission, etc.). A NYT op-ed a few months ago on the Mumbai attacks by President Asif Ali Zardawi was a notable example of that (mocked by Mencius Moldbug here.

    Pakistan is among the worst of the U.S.’s and the civilized world’s problem states. It’s good that it’s getting more attention in the West, though clearly bad that its situation is deteriorating at an accelerating pace.

    Apologies also for the unclosed html tag supra.

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