There has been what’s being characterized as a “suicide attack” in Pakistan:
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide attacker detonated a bomb that ripped through a crowded hotel restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and wounding 25, police said.
The blast deepened instability in Pakistan, still reeling from bloody political riots during the weekend in its commercial capital, Karachi. The attack appeared unrelated to that unrest.
Provincial police chief Sharif Virk said investigators had found the legs of the suspected suicide bomber, with a message taped to one leg that spies for America would meet such a fate.
Several things struck me about this incident. First, I wonder how this incident jibes with Robert Pape’s hypothesis of the connection between suicide attacks and military occupation. Who is occupying Pakistan? Surely not the United States. If what we’re doing in Pakistan is occupation, is every U. S. embassy an occupation, too?
But I also wondered if this weren’t an instance of something I’ve heard called “assisted suicide bombing” i.e. strapping explosives to an unwilling victim’s body and forcing him (or, presumably, her) into the area being subjected to attack. Cheap. Easy. Effective.
The note makes me wonder if the “attacker” might have been suspected of being a U. S. informant.
