08/16/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10070
TERROR IN PAKISTAN
Religious minorities and foreigners in Pakistan are again being targeted by violent extremists. On August 5th, terrorists armed with assault rifles opened fire on the Murree [mahr-EE] Christian School near Islamabad. Six Pakistani employees of the school were killed. The next day, three men, believed to have been involved in the attacks, killed themselves with a grenade after crashing a police checkpoint.
On August 9th, a grenade attack on a Christian hospital in Taxila [tex-lah], near Islamabad, killed three nurses and wounded some twenty other people. This was the third fatal attack against Christian institutions in Pakistan since March. Five people -- including two Americans -- were killed and more than forty were wounded on March 17th, when grenades were thrown into Islamabad's Protestant International Church.
Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, America's profound sympathy for the victims and their families. The U.S. and Pakistan are working together in the war against terrorism. Pakistan allows the U.S. military to use Pakistani bases. U.S. and Pakistani authorities have worked closely to identify and detain suspected members of the Al-Qaida terrorist network and Taleban crossing into the country from Afghanistan.
The Government of Pakistan has frozen over three hundred-thousand dollars in terrorist-related assets. Three accused terrorists charged with the June suicide car-bombing of the U.S. consulate in Karachi are set to go on trial this week. Twelve Pakistanis were killed in that attack. Arrests warrants have been issued for six other suspects in the case.
The real target of those who throw grenades at minority religious facilities is not only Pakistan's religious minorities. The terrorist perpetrators seek to destroy Pakistan's future as a society valuing tolerance and individual human rights -- including the right to worship freely. As Pakistan stood with the people of the United States after September 11th, so the U.S. stands with Pakistan in confronting a common enemy -- terrorism and the intolerance that it fuels.