World

A white-haired elder joined in. “We used to hear about bombs going off in other places,” he said. “We would try to imagine what that was like. Now we know the result is total devastation.”
We met the man who admits that he is to blame for the blast. For legal reasons we cannot identify him. He was hooded and chained during our interview.
He is linked to militants fighting in Afghanistan and said that he was storing explosives for them. When asked if he ever thought of the friends and neighbours he had killed, he wept as he replied.
“I am ready to go on my knees and beg forgiveness from everyone affected,” he said.
“I pray the dead rest in peace. Had I known what would happen I would never have kept the explosives. I am grieving because I made such a big mistake and so many people died.”
But he said he would have been happy if his explosives had killed British and American forces in Afghanistan.
“I would have been very happy,” he said. “If God gives me a chance in the future I’ll go and fight the Americans and the British.”
The school teacher said that he was trained at a militant camp in Afghanistan in 1998, but never fought there. He stressed that in those days jihadis like him had the government’s support.
Some of the groups menacing Punjab now were nurtured by the state in the past. They were tools of government policy in Afghanistan and Kashmir. While they still appear to have their protectors in Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the ISI, these days they are feeling the cold.
The militants did not take kindly to being dumped, according to a policeman heavily involved in hunting them down.
“They were like cheap soldiers for the Pakistan army,” he said. “They were pampered by government agencies. But after 9/11, the government stopped providing money, support and places for training and they turned on the state. They are like jilted lovers.”
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, has expressed concerns about the growing threat in south Punjab.
Britain and America will be hoping that Pakistan reacts more quickly to this danger than it did to others in the past.