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The Afghanistan-Pakistán nexus
20/10/2008 By Robert Matthews
Pakistan, a country that Newsweek headlined in late 2007 as “the most dangerous country on earth”, has become perceptibly more dangerous. When on September 20 a ton of explosives was detonated by a suicide bomber inside the security gate of the Marriot hotel in Islamabad, killing at least 53 people and injuring 266 more,.
it was the worst bombing ever in Islamabad and came eleven months after the most deadly attack in Pakistan’s history when on October 18 2007 a suicide bomber killed 136 people and wounded another 450 as Benazir Bhutto arrived in Karachi.
The blast this time occurred within a few hundred meters of the prime minister’s house, where Pakistani government leaders were dining after the president’s address to Parliament. Many analysts believe that the bombing was probably a retaliation for recent Pakistani military operations which killed scores of Islamic extremists in the district of Bajaur in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
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Keywords
Afghanistan Conflict Pakistan Terrorism War on terrorRelated publications
- Afghanistan and the crisis in Pakistan
- Already a failed state? Pakistan in the aftermath of Bhutto's assassination
- Democracy perspectives in Pakistan
- Pakistan: farewell to Musharaff and a warning to the radicals
Bio author: Robert Matthews
Robert Matthews, Associate Fellow of FRIDE, holds a Ph.D in Latin American history from New York University, where he was a teacher at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. For twenty years was a collaborator with the Peace Research Center - Centro de Investigación para la Paz (CIP) - in Madrid, specializing in United States foreign policy.
