Parade Lane attack (Rawalpindi Saddar)

Yet another brazen, well coordinated attack from militants. This time it is Friday and it is a masjid inside one of the most secure compounds in the country. Or so Pakistan Army thought before today's juma prayers. Attack leaves atleast 40 dead. Army's Major General, who usually is off limits to all civilians, is among the dead. So are others. Army is stunned so is our comical, useless security guru, Rehman Malik. All day TV anchors have had almost nothing to say besides replaying four photographs from inside the unfortunate masjid. However, there was one telling interview of the key eyewitness, a man who himself was once in Military Police, about what could have happened. He told the TV anchor of Dawn TV that he thinks militants might have put ladders on the wall and jumped in. That is quite possible and explains our lack of all preparation. Consistently, militants have played havoc on the streets of Rawalpindi and Peshawar destroying any semblance of governance in these two cities, putting everyone's life in complete danger and helping collapse Pakistan's economy.

I cannot say whether militants are being backed by Indian RAW or Blackwater agency, who now openly operates across Pakistan from American Embassy in Islamabad. (They also seems to be building a permanent residence at Karachi.) We cannot be sure who is behind such a mess so we almost always end up blaming President Zia and the mullahs of Jamat-e-Islami. But we seems to have no proof. And our ISI, now deranged and thrown like a football, looks itself in a bit of a mess. They cannot, for example, find a single culprit or connect the chain of suicide blasts which have killed over 3000 Pakistanis in one year alone. We have never heard of a major action being taken against these perpetrators of crime. If there has been a certain, targeted action then we must know. Unfortunately, fiddly Interior Minister, has failed us. Army Chief is quiet as always; Zardari remains holed up in his Presidential House. He cannot care less than that. How sick of our rulers. Here, people die on daily basis and the only thing our worthy President can do is dole out a silly blurb in media.

But now that 6 Serving Officers have died in broad daylight, which was not a simple suicide bomb blast but cold blooded murder of women, children and men, Army is likely to take certain measures. I am hoping that they won't stop their men from praying but certainly this marks the certain closure of beautiful Cantonment mosques across Pakistan for general public. And that's the sad side of safety measures. You close contact between the haves and the have nots. Certainly, whoever planned this attack knew too well that army men would be present along with their wives and children in the mosque. There is certainly someone from inside who has been giving key information to terrorists who struck today. So, the key point for investigators would be to investigate people who've been frequenting this masjid since last 15 days or so. I think that holds the key to the attackers as well as to the planners.