Islamabad Blast is a Victory for No One

The Marriott hotel in the center of Islamabad has always been a major potential target for militants. For a long time it was the Pakistan capital's only luxury hotel and it remains the favored haunt of the city's westernized elite. Only a few hundred meters from the National Assembly, opposite a compound of official residences for ministers, next to the new offices for Pakistan state television, an attack on the Marriott is an strike to the heart of the Pakistani state and the establishment elite of the 173 million strong nation.

And along with power, the Marriott symbolizes something else for the ultra-conservative Islamic lobbies: Westernization and its concomitant "moral decadence". The swimming pool where expats swam in bikinis, the sports bar in the basement where alcohol was served, the lurid stories of debauch that circulated, all contributed to making the Marriott a target of choice.

So did the political situation. Two major elements have come together. First, the accession of a new president, Benazir Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, who is known to be relatively pro-Western and spoke yesterday about his determination to stand together with the international community in the fight against terrorism. Secondly, a sudden uptick in activity in the violence-wracked tribal agencies along the frontier with Afghanistan involving highly controversial raids into Pakistani territory. Both may have pushed militants from the various groups which form the "Pakistani Taliban" to strike – possibly aided and abetted by individuals from al-Qaida who have been instrumental in teaching insurgents on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier how to make and use large vehicle-born suicide bombs. Last month The Observer interviewed one 21-year-old from the western Pakistani city of Bahawalpur who had been recruited by Taliban militants on the frontier, groomed as a suicide bomber and then given the mission of driving a large truck full of explosives into an American base in Afghanistan. Similar tactics were used to destroy the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad in 1995 and US embassies in eastern Africa in 1998.

However the militant may have miscalculated. The carnage is likely to be terrible. The attack at 8pm would have come just as hundreds were sitting or standing in the hotel's many function rooms for the communal iftar dinner – the breaking of the Ramadan month's fast. Almost all of those killed will be local Pakistanis – and even if most ordinary Pakistanis normally feel little sympathy for the elite who enjoyed the expensive delights of the luxury hotels – they will sympathize with this destruction of a ritual that epitomizes family life and amity across the Muslim world.

So the horror of the attack is likely to make it counterproductive for the militants. The recent history of Islamic radical violence shows us that strikes on such targets – such as in Amman, Jordan, in 2005 – drastically undercuts support for militants. A similar phenomenon has been seen in Iraq in recent years, in Saudi Arabia too after a police station was hit and was observed in Algeria in the worst days of the violence of the 1990s civil war where massacres of hundreds of civilians discredited the so-called "mujahideen".

Already polls show support for Osama bin Laden and Islamic militants among most Pakistanis is dropping. This attack will accelerate the trend. In the battle for hearts and minds that is at the heart of this struggle, the killing of hundreds of men, women and children celebrating the end of a day's fast with their loved ones is a tragedy for all, a victory for no one.