LAHORE: Wednesday's suicide bombing in a Pakistan army camp, that killed 44 soldiers, was apparently carried out by Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) or Movement for Enforcement of Islamic Shariah, a banned extremist organisation.
The pro-Taliban TNSM owned up to the attack, saying it was carried out to avenge the October 30 bombing of its religious seminary — Madrassah Ziaul Uloom — in the Bajaur Agency on the Pak-Afghan border. Eighty-three alleged militants were killed in Bajaur.
According to military sources in Islamabad, a TNSM spokesman called up the Peshawar office of the The News and owned up to the attack. Rahimullah Yousafzai, the executive editor of The News, said: "The caller said that the attack was meant to avenge the Bajaur killings and warned that another 250 Pakistani suicide bombers are waiting in the wings to sacrifice their lives for the cause of Islam."
TNSM is among the five organisations proscribed by General Musharraf on January 12, 2002. In 2006, the organisation witnessed a revival in the Pak-Afghan tribal areas, largely due to the efforts of Maulana Fazlullah, Musharraf's son-in-law.
Sources recalled that a day after the army assault on Bajaur, which also took the life of Maulvi Liaqat, the TNSM deputy-commander in Bajaur, the organisation's commander, Maulvi Faqeer Mohammad declared at a rally that the killing would be avenged.
President Musharraf was scheduled to visit Mardan on Wednesday and Wednesday's attack on a military training facility was meant to send a message to General that the war against terror was far from over.
Military sources said that a day before the suicide attack, TNSM militants had fired two rockets that landed near a military base in Wana, the capital of South Waziristan Agency when NWFP Governor Lt Gen (retd) Ali Jan Mohammad Orakzai was touring the area. Aurakzai, the top government official in the tribal regions, was addressing a meeting of local elders when the missiles landed less than one kilometer away.
Sources said that the attack against Aurakzai was launched by the TNSM over the Governor's failure to stick to his promise that no military action would be launched against the militants in the tribal areas and instead peace deals would be signed with them.
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