The bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistan capital has brought war home to Pakistanis like few other events, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad Islamabad is in shock. On 20 September a truck laden with high-octane explosives reduced the city's premier Marriott Hotel from a sanitised showpiece to a black inferno. Fifty-three were killed in the blast; 266 were wounded, including 100 seriously. "I've seen bombs all over Pakistan," said a seasoned reporter at the scene. "But I've never seen anything like this." The Marriott lies less than a mile away from the country's national parliament and presidency. Four hours before the blast Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, delivered his maiden address to an audience of parliamentarians, military chiefs and diplomats. Like every Pakistani leader he had to walk the wavy line between showing fealty to the US superpower (and paymaster) while deferring to the fact of his people's immense anti-American sentiment. His "government would be firm in its resolve not to allow the use of its soil for carrying out terrorist activities against any foreign country," he said, in reference to Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters ensconced on Pakistan's ungoverned North West frontier with Afghanistan. But -- he added to a thumping ovation -- "we will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism", a reference to a dozen or so unilateral American strikes inside Pakistan in the last month. Four hours after the blast the bravado had gone. An ashen Zardari told his people: "We are not afraid of death. It will come at the appointed time. But we are determined to clear this cancer of militancy from Pakistan." It sounded phony. Zardari was broadcasting from a locked-down presidency ringed by commandos in full combat gear. It was the militants who were striking at the heart of his capital. No one has claimed the bombing, the worst in Islamabad's 44-year history. But "all roads lead to South Waziristan," hinted Rehman Malik, Pakistan's de facto interior minister. South Waziristan is a tribal agency on the Afghan border. It's also the redoubt of the Pakistan Taliban (PT), an alliance of tribal militia that rule large swathes of the borderlands and give shelter to the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The PT were said to be behind the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto last year and sundry other attacks. They have ties to sectarian jihadi groups based in Pakistan's cities. By its manner, sophistication and sheer barbarity, most analysts believe it was one of them who executed the Marriott hit, even if orders came from South Waziristan. The same analysts are clear why it came. "It's a warning to the government and the military about how things are going to be in the future if there is any sustained campaign against militants in the northwestern region," said Talaat Masoud, a retired general. For the last month the army has waged war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in that region. According to the army's own figures, 700 "militants" have been killed and 300,000 tribesmen driven from their homes. Over the same period American Special Forces have launched air and ground incursions into South Waziristan and other tribal areas, in the teeth of official Pakistani opposition, and at a cost so far of more than 50 dead. Given this two-pronged assault many Pakistanis were braced for retaliation. Nor would the target have surprised them. An American chain, the Marriott was where Pakistan's political leadership dined with diplomats, where intelligence men gave off-the-record briefings to journalists. It was where, reportedly, Zardari, Prime Minister Youssef Raza Gilani, parliamentarians, military heads and diplomats were due to have their Iftar meal on 20 September, before "changing venue" at the last moment. The hotel's other 1,000 guests and staff were not blessed with the same intelligence. And while most of the slain were Pakistani -- security guards, waiters, taxi drivers -- they included the Czech ambassador, two US marines and a Vietnamese woman. Foreigners too were among the hurt. For those, like Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan Mustafa Abul- Yazid, who seek to "strike the Crusader in Pakistan" the Marriott was a kind of Sodom. For others it was a symbol of American hegemony. Since its accession to power the Pakistan government has insisted that it is not under that hegemony. The "war on terror" is "Pakistan's war" because the "victims are Pakistanis and the perpetrators, often, are Pakistani," says Rehman Malik. But most Pakistanis don't see it that way. They believe, after 9/11, Pervez Musharraf and his military regime joined "America's war" in Afghanistan in exchange for largesse and recognition. Since then, they have watched the frontline migrate eastwards from Kandahar to Kabul to Waziristan to Islamabad. The carnage of the Marriott will convince some that the war must be fought and the "cancer" cauterised. But others -- those sifting through the rubble of their lives -- may feel they have had as much say in their "Pakistan war" as Iraqis and Afghans have in theirs.
