At least six people were killed and 42 others wounded in a pair of suicide bombings at the International Islamic University in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, the latest in a rising string of attacks across the nation in the past several weeks.
The latest attack took the nation by shock, leading the government to quickly announce that it was shutting down every school and college across the entire nation. All public and private education in the nation will hence be shuttered until further notice.
This is a major change from the assorted military offensives across the last several years, where the conflict was largely restricted to a small region, and even when an attack did occur, it left most of the nation untouched.
Not so this time, as every student across the country will wake up tomorrow realizing that the war is having a direct impact on their life. South Waziristan may be a remote and little thought of region, but the offensive is no ordinary one.
The US appears to pay the Pakistan military to launch offensives in civilian areas. Then the US provides aid money to pay for maintaining the million or so refugees created by these offensives. The US did this for the Swat assault and now has passed a multi-uear package deal to cover annual assaults for the next five years.
@handyman,
US does not pay for anything. Pakistan only receives peanuts, nothing more
The way US is handling this situation, this problem is only going to get worse, and the taliban stronger. hasnt the past 4 years been proof of that?
heres a suggestion for obama:
give pakistan the drones, and instead of dropping bombs, drop millions of small food packages for the civilians in the tribal areas. every package should have an american flag, and a note in Urdu as well as english explaining that the previous administration made a mistake by bombing pakistan and the current one is now going to make up for it.
This way the drone bombings will continue, albeit in a better managed way, and US will win the hearts and minds of the hungry and poor people in the tribal areas.