Pakistan bad dream of Iraq-style carnage comes true

By Simon Cameron-Moore - Analysis

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - After dinner at the Islamabad Club, a private hangout for the capital's elite, a Pakistani intelligence officer leant across to confide a nightmare haunting the country's security agencies.

"We fear that Pakistan could become like Iraq, with all these suicide bombings," the officer said with a lowered voice. That was in March, after a spate of attacks killed close to 45 people.

Four months on, following a commando assault on a militant stronghold at a mosque in the capital, the security situation has become so bad that the officer's bad dream appears all too real.

On Thursday alone, there were three suicide attacks, killing 52 people. They targeted police, the army, and engineers from China, Pakistan's most reliable and cherished regional ally. Although the Chinese escaped unhurt their police escorts died.

Officials say militant soulmates of al Qaeda and the Taliban, encouraged by U.S. failings in Iraq, believe they can destabilize Pakistan, and bring down U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf by using the same tactics as the Iraqi insurgents.

Over two weeks in July, more than 180 people have been killed, mainly soldiers and police, and mostly victims of suicide bombers.

To make matters worse a 10-month-old peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in the North Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border has broken down.

The carnage has come at a crucial time in Pakistan's history.

Elections are due by January, and Musharraf is enduring his rockiest period since coming to power in a 1999 coup.

It leaves the government with a dilemma; appeasement doesn't work, but heavy casualties could backfire too.

"We are not planning to surrender. We will fight it out," a top official, who request anonymity, told Reuters on Friday.

"We cannot afford to alienate the people like the U.S. government seems to have done over Iraq," he said. "We do not want things to come to such a pass that the people say: "Enough, just make peace with the mullahs, we want peace."

CAREWORN, UNPREDICTABLE

These days, Musharraf refers to "Talibanisation" and extremism as the greatest dangers to Pakistan. He wants a second term to defeat them and protect a legacy of economic revival and lasting peace with neighboring India.

The general can steer his own re-election through the sitting assemblies before their dissolution in November, but if polls are to be free and fair, as Washington insists, he could end up sharing power with a prime minister not of his choosing.