US accused of authoring madrasa attacks

After a missile strike in Pakistan killed 80 people in a madrasa,threats of bloody retribution and accusations of US involvement erupted across Pakistan's tribal areas on Oct. 31 . The force of the blast was so great that it tore the simple building apart and sprayed blood and body parts all around. An estimated 20,000 tribesmen crowded into Khar, six miles from the school in Chingai village that was shredded by air strikes the day before. Cries of "Down with America," "Down with Bush" and "Down with Musharraf" rang out as radical clerics addressed protesters, many of whom brandished Kalashnikovs or rocket launchers. Local pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Faqir Mohammad, told the crowd: "Our jihad will continue and, Inshallah, people will go to Afghanistan to oust American and British forces." Inayat ur Rehman claimed to have a "squad of suicide bombers" waiting to kill Pakistani soldiers. When he asked if the crowd would support the measure, the tribesmen replied with a unison "Yes." Villagers say that the dozens slaughtered in the attack were innocent religious students, not international terrorists, and that among the body parts being collected for burial were those of children. A local journalist told Reuters news agency that he saw villagers collecting the mutilated bodies of children from the wreckage. A villager, Syed Wali, said that pupils studying at the madrassa as young as seven were among the dead. An opposition party leader claimed that 30 of the dead were children. The Pakistani government insists the school was a front for an al-Qaida meeting facility. The Khar rally was the largest of several across North West Frontier, Sindh and Punjab provinces, where US flags and effigies of George Bush were burned. Samina Ahmed of the thinktank Crisis Group said the strike was counterproductive and would spell "big trouble" for Pakistan and the US. "An attack on a madrasa in which 80-something people are killed is great propaganda for the Taliban," she said. "This will inflame opinion among Pashtuns on both sides of the border and boost recruitment." Tensions were increased by widespread suspicions of US involvement in the attack. Last January, a pilotless Predator drone struck at a house just two miles from the Bajaur madrasa, killing 18 people but missing its target, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri. The US role in the latest strike is unclear. President Pervez Musharraf insisted that his solders were solely responsible, an assertion supported by the US military in Afghanistan. "I can assure you without doubt that [we] had nothing to do with that attack," said spokesman Colonel Tom Collins. However, Pakistan's chief military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, said the US provided intelligence that led to the strike–a statement he later tried to withdraw. But he refused to deny US involvement. Doubts over the official explanation were fuelled by measures limiting media access to the site of the attack. Soldiers prevented local journalists from reaching Bajaur, while foreign correspondents were barred from the tribal areas. The timing of the attack also roused suspicions. Just days earlier, Musharraf's officials were talking peace with the Bajaur militants and had freed several prominent fighters as a gesture of goodwill. The two sides were due to sign a deal on Oct. 31. Instead, the military bombed the school and killed Maulana Liaqatullah, one of the radical clerics with whom the government had been negotiating, and badly inflamed anti-government hostility across the province. Clerics and politicians said they were convinced the US had spurred the attack. Some US commentators suggested that it could have been a failed "October surprise" attempt to deal al-Qaida a blow before US midterm elections. Sahibzada Haroon Rashid, a member of Parliament who lives nearby, said he heard two large explosions "so powerful they shook the earth and rattled our doors and windows." Fifteen minutes later Pakistani army helicopters arrived, fired a handful of rockets and left. "Those were small thuds–nothing in comparison to the big explosions that preceded them minutes earlier," Rashid said. "I have no doubt in my mind that it was done by the Americans and we are now making a futile attempt to cover it up." Rashid resigned from parliament in protest, as did another senior leader of the religious political alliance that controls North-West Frontier Province, near Afghanistan. Until now, the country's religious parties had maintained an uneasy alliance with Musharraf, and he often deferred to their demands. Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khan, who heads one of two major religious parties in Parliament, said: "What a stupid operation, just one day before an accord between the local Taliban and the government. It has killed the entire spirit and the peaceful atmosphere in the tribal areas." Lying in a hospital bed in nearby Peshawar, Abu Bakar, one of just three seminarians to survive the strike, insisted the madrasa was engaged in education and not terrorism. "We had come to learn Allah's religion," said the 22-year-old, whose legs were broken by falling rubble. In Islamabad, opposition political leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed blamed the US for the attack and said claims that the madrassa was a terrorist training center were "rubbish." Thirty children were among the dead, he said. "It was an American plane behind the attack and Pakistan is taking responsibility because they know there would be a civil war if the American responsibility was known," said Ahmed.