New Delhi, June 2
India is assessing the impact of Monday’s car bomb blast outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad, which killed eight people and injured at least 24, on the political dynamics of Pakistan. While it is a challenge to the coalition government in Pakistan which had tried to buy peace with the jihadists groups in the North-Western Frontier Province and the tribal belt of Pakistan, it has serious implications for India too.
The residence of Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, situated 200 metres away from the bomb blast site, was damaged. An assessment will determine the correctives that New Delhi will have to make while dealing with Pakistan. That is why there has been no reaction from the Ministry of External Affairs on the Islamabad blast. The MEA did confirm that the Indian High Commissioner’s residence in Islamabad had been damaged in the blast. “Yes, there has been some damage to the Indian High Commissioner’s residence in Islamabad. Fortunately, no one in the residence has been hurt in the incident,” the MEA spokesman said.
First and foremost, the blast has
amply proved the futility of the newly installed coalition government’s policy of engagement with Pashtun jihadist groups. India has been maintaining that Pakistan’s efforts to strike a deal to buy peace with die-hard jihadists would not yield any positive results. Monday’s event in Islamabad has shown that New Delhi’s concerns were not misplaced. The Islamabad blast appears to have the imprint of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida. It is the first major attack against a foreign embassy in Islamabad in quite some time, with the sole exception of a terror attack against Italians in an Islamabad restaurant in March 2008. So far, jihadists in Pakistan had been mainly targeting the security forces.
The Yusuf Raza Gilani government’s policy of buying peace has helped in the resurgence of jihadi forces in Pakistan and it is a bad sign for New Delhi. Once the jihadi groups don’t have Pakistani security forces breathing down the neck, they are bound to move towards India.
With the onset of summer, the mountain passes in Jammu and Kashmir have opened up and have become navigable.
