Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [298]
20 September 2008 The Marriott Hotel in Islamabad is badly damaged by a car bomb, in the first major terrorist attack in the capital. Over the next eighteen months, terrorist attacks by the Pakistani Taleban and their allies intensify across Pakistan, becoming increasingly indiscriminate and claiming thousands of victims among civilians as well as among Pakistani troops and police.
November 2008 Relations between India and Pakistan worsen drastically again after terrorists from the Pakistan-based (though officially banned) Lashkar-e-Taiba carry out terrorist attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, leaving 185 dead. Pakistan is forced to take intensified measures against LeT, but refuses Indian demands to extradite suspects to India.
February 2009 The national government and the government of the NWFP reach the ‘Nizam-e-Adl’ agreement with the Pakistani Taleban in Swat, providing for the extension of Shariah law in the province in return for the Taleban abandoning their campaign of violence.
March 2009 The Zardari administration ousts the Sharif government in the Punjab, after the Supreme Court (appointed by Musharraf and Zardari) declares the election of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif illegal. The Muslim League leads a mass march on Islamabad. Zardari is forced to back down, allow Iftikhar Chaudhry back as Chief Justice, and allow the Muslim League to resume the government in Punjab.
April 2009 The Taleban in Swat take over the neighbouring district of Buner, closer to Islamabad.
May 2009 The Pakistani army launches a massive offensive to retake Swat and Buner. Hundreds of Taleban are killed or captured, but hundreds of thousands of civilians are also forced to flee their homes.
August 2009 Pakistani Taleban leader Beitullah Mahsud is killed in a US airstrike. He is succeeded by Hakimullah Mahsud. Hamid Karzai is re-elected president of Afghanistan in elections which are widely seen as deeply flawed by rigging and corruption.
September 2009 The US Senate passes the Kerry – Lugar Bill, providing for greatly increased US assistance to Pakistan. However, it causes great offence to many Pakistanis by the strict conditions it sets concerning Pakistani action against the Taleban, and Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
October 2009 The Pakistani military begins a major offensive against the Pakistani Taleban in south Waziristan.
10 October 2009 Taleban militants attack the headquarters of the Pakistani army in Rawalpindi, killing ten.
December 2009 US President Barack Obama announces a ‘surge’ in US troops in Afghanistan, and intensified operations against the Taleban there. The Supreme Court declares illegal an amnesty passed by President Musharraf giving Zardari and other leading PPP figures immunity for prosecution for corruption.
31 December 2009 National Finance Commission Award, agreed between the national government and the provinces, rebalances the allocation of revenue in favour of Sindh, the NWFP and especially Balochistan.
1 January 2010 More than ninety people killed by Taleban suicide bomb at a volleyball game in Laki Marwat district of the NWFP.
14 January 2010 Jamaat-ud-Dawa condemns the killing of Muslims by suicide bombing as unislamic and says that such attacks ‘played into the hands of the US, Israel and India’.
19 April 2010 President Zardari signs into law sweeping constitutional reforms transferring powers from the President to the Prime Minister, thereby reversing changes introduced by Presidents Zia-ul-Haq and Musharraf. In accordance with a longstanding demand of the Awami National Party (ANP), the North West Frontier Province is renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This move sets off violent protests in the Hindko-speaking area of the province in which several people are killed.
1 May 2010 Faisal Shehzad, a Pakistani-American, attempts to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, New York. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton subsequently warns Pakistan that there would have been ‘very severe consequences’ had the bomb exploded.
1 July 2010 Suicide