Islamabad: An editorial in a Pakistani daily has said it is the al Qaeda, and not India, the US or Israel, which is working through the bribe-taking Taliban to plan the destruction of the nation.
The whole of Pakistan protested against the anti-Islam film on September 21, which was declared a national holiday for Pakistanis to protest ``peacefully`` against the film. However, the protests resulted in destruction and death of the demonstrators.
Twenty-six people were killed in three major cities seen most vulnerable to al Qaeda and its Pakistani affiliates: Karachi, Peshawar and Islamabad, the editorial in The Express Tribune said.
The government`s decision to vent the rage of blasphemy was proved wrong, the editorial added. The attempt of the government to ``join in`` rather than to resist the muscle of al Qaeda failed and served to highlight the truth about the spreading disorder in the country, it further said.
In Peshawar, the thinking of al Qaeda was clearly upfront as the city appeared to be in the hands of mobs ruled by extremist ideology, with the provincial government losing control of the situation, it stated.
The mobs were made up of cadres from the madrassa network, workers of religious parties, school and college students and urchins from the slums that ring Pakistani cities. Al Qaeda and the Taliban sat back and saw its growing population of allies do its work.
The central point in their thinking was the abdication of the state from its Islamic obligation to punish America and its allies for having offended the Muslims, the editorial stated.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, protests against the blaspheming film were impressive, but not as menacing, partly because al Qaeda had not yet acquired as dominant a position as in Pakistan, the editorial said.
The Arab Spring has made it possible for al Qaeda to show its flag in states where it could not have dared to enter before. Failing states such as Iraq, Somalia and Yemen were already becoming comparable with Pakistan and Afghanistan, but now Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and many African states with Muslim communities are also becoming vulnerable, it added.
ANI
