Would you be considered normal in Pakistan?

Take the following test.

What would be your first thought upon hearing that someone blew themselves up in a crowded restaurant in Peshawar, Pakistan at lunch time and killed 22 people, including two women and a child?


If the first thing that came to mind was this must have been an act of retaliation for the recent killing of the genocidal maniac Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, consider yourself normal by Pakistani standards. According to the New York Times, this was the first possibility local police thought to discount.


But revenge wouldn't explain why this was the third such suicide bombing to hit this neighborhood just this year, bringing the total death toll from suicide bombings to 69.


According to police, what would explain this recent spate of bombings, would be a "reaction to the prevalent geopolitical scenario in the region,” as police chief Sharif Virk told The Times. As the Times goes on to explain:

Pro-Taliban militants are thought to have staged a series of suicide bombings in Pakistan in recent months, apparently in retaliation for airstrikes on their camps and compounds in the border area, and in opposition to the support of the United States by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president.

How to explain why the bomber targeted a restaurant frequented by Afghan refugees and hospital workers?


Here is where the revenge theory comes in. As the Times reports:

Witnesses and the police said the restaurant’s owner was an Uzbek of Afghan origin and was affiliated with a former Uzbek warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose posters adorned the walls.

Afghan refugees of various ethnic groups and political factions have lived largely peacefully in Peshawar for nearly 30 years, but militants sympathetic to the Taliban are opposed to General Dostum, an important leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

Police denied reports that the bomber had left behind a note. According to the Times:

In interviews, Mr. Virk and other police investigators said all that they had recovered were the bomber’s legs.

“There is no suicide note or any writing on the legs,” said a police superintendent, Qazi Jamilur Rehman, who is the head of the investigating team.