Taliban Target Biggest Shia Procession On Shiite Holiest Day In Pakistan and Suicide Bomb It, 27 Dead

Let's face it...the Taliban have bought in hook, line and sinker into the sectarian violence strategy developed by al Qaeda in Iraq as they targeted a large procession today of Pakistani Shiites observing the holiest of Shia day and a single suicide bomber's explosives ripped the procession apart killing 27 Pakistanis.

From the article at DAWN:

A suicide bomber on Monday struck Pakistan’s largest procession of Shia Muslims on the holiest day in their calendar, killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens more, defying a major security clampdown.
The blast unleashed pandemonium at M A Jinnah Road, one of the biggest boulevards in Karachi, where angry mourners threw stones and opened fire into the air, sparking appeals from the authorities for calm.
Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces had been deployed, fearing sectarian clashes or militant bombings would target the Shia faithful who whip themselves to mourn the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.
“It was a suicide attack. He was walking with the procession and he blew himself up,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told a private television, appealing on the Shia community to suspend their commemorations.

As we know from the strategy of al Qaeda, this type of attack is supposed to create a rampage of revenge on the Shia side and instigate a rash of violence coming from the Shias against Sunnis - the Taliban would just love to see the Shias blow up a Sunni mosque, for example. Chaos is simply what the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan want at this time - they want the Pakistani government to have to manage the crisis and because of that, pull back from the operations in the NW Provinces and agencies.

What the Taliban are dancing with is the backlash that occured in Iraq over this same strategy. Granted, the Americans were in Iraq to help provide some security and uncover the true assassins in these cases but in Pakistan, there is a real chance that the Pakistanis will come to the same conclusion....that the Taliban is the real enemy in all of this and the citizenry will rise up against them. It is a sign of desperation by the Taliban, in my view. The only analogy I can come up with to describe this is that if you had a long-established gang of bank robbers who brought in two new members who insisted that during the bank robberies, the bank guards needed to be killed...the end result would be the security forces would bring more and more resources to bear down on the criminals and so, in effect, the gang would end up getting caught simply due to the newcomers' strategy of violence.

Suicide attack on Ashura procession kills 27 in Karachi

KARACHI: A suicide bomber on Monday struck Pakistan’s largest procession of Shia Muslims on the holiest day in their calendar, killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens more, defying a major security clampdown.
The blast unleashed pandemonium at M A Jinnah Road, one of the biggest boulevards in Karachi, where angry mourners threw stones and opened fire into the air, sparking appeals from the authorities for calm.
Tens of thousands of police and paramilitary forces had been deployed, fearing sectarian clashes or militant bombings would target the Shia faithful who whip themselves to mourn the seventh-century killing of Imam Hussein.
“It was a suicide attack. He was walking with the procession and he blew himself up,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told a private television, appealing on the Shia community to suspend their commemorations.
“This pattern shows that this was a joint venture between Tehreek-i-Taliban and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi,” Malik said, referring to two of Pakistan’s most potent militant networks.
Ambulances raced through the streets, ferrying the casualties to hospitals, where state television said medics declared a state of emergency.
Sindh Minister for Health, Dr Sagheer Ahmed reported a higher death toll when he told APP that at least 30 persons were killed while 63 were injured in the blast.
“We have declared emergency at all hospitals in Karachi and doctors are making every effort to save the injured. The situation is very grim,” he said.
It was the second bomb attack to mar Ashura in Pakistan after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a main Shia mosque in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, killing seven people late Sunday.
Fire broke out after the blast in Karachi, fanning thick smoke into the sky, and people were running in all directions, an AFP reporter said.
Two further explosions were heard, which could have been gas tanks exploding in burning vehicles, and mourners torched a bus, which had blocked off a road for the procession, witnesses said.
DawnNews reported that at least 50 shops and two police stations had been set ablaze. Dozens of vehicles, including two police mobiles, were also torched following the attack.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the blast and also appealed on the masses to remain peaceful, his office said.
In Karachi, the capital of Sindh, more than 50,000 Shias had poured into the streets to commemorate Muharram.
Sectarian violence periodically flares in Pakistan between Shias and the country’s majority Sunnis.
Security has plummeted over the last two and a half years in Pakistan, where militant attacks have killed more than 2,700 people since July 2007 and Washington has put the country on the frontline of its war on Al-Qaeda.
Shias account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan’s mostly Sunni Muslim population of 167 million. More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the late 1980s.
Small explosives planted in a gutter had ripped through an Ashura procession in Karachi on Sunday wounding 17 people, officials said.