Strike at 'den of Western Decadence'

The target of yesterday's lethal and devastating attack in the heart of Islamabad should not come as a surprise. The Marriott hotel has always been in the sights of militants. For a long time it was the Pakistani's capital only luxury hotel, and remains the favored haunt of the capital's Westernized elite. It stands only a few hundred meters from the National Assembly, opposite a compound of ministers' residences and next to the new offices for Pakistan state TV. An attack on the Marriott is an strike to the heart of the Pakistani state and the perceived elite of a nation of 173 million people.

Along with power, the Marriott symbolizes something else for ultra-conservative Islamic lobbies: Westernization and its concomitant 'moral decadence'. The swimming pool where expat women swam in bikinis; the sports bar in the basement where alcohol was served; the lurid stories of debauchery that circulate and even the internet center 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. Zardari comes from a Pakistani political tradition that, though it has made its accommodations with extremism, is largely seen as secular.

The second factor is a sudden upsurge in activity in the violence-wracked tribal agencies along the frontier with Afghanistan, involving highly controversial raids into Pakistani territory. Not only have there been major Pakistani army offensives in recent weeks - as well as formal and informal truces with various extremist elements - but the new escalation that has come along with recent incursions into Pakistani territory by American soldiers based in Afghanistan hunting al-Qaeda figures will have made a major strike into Pakistan more attractive for the militants. Men like Baitullah Mahsud, the most prominent leader of the Pakistan Taliban, believes the 'infidel' government in Islamabad needs to be punished for its support for the West - whatever the rhetoric from the capital. The fiercely proud and independent identity of the Pashtun tribes of the border regions fuses with a very contemporary international 'jihadi identity'. Globalised Islamic radicalism thus radicalizes and legitimizes a local cause.

Both these factors may have pushed militants from the various groups which form the 'Pakistani Taliban' to strike. It is too early to say but the likelihood must be that they were aided and abetted by individuals from al-Qaeda who have been instrumental in teaching insurgents on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier how to make and use large vehicle-borne suicide bombs. Last month The Observer interviewed a 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 US 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 militants 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 the victims of 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. Everywhere surveys reveal the same thing - the closer you are to the violence, the less sympathy you have for its perpetrators. This may not halt rampant anti-Americanism or support for attacks against international troops in Afghanistan, but already polls show support for Osama bin Laden among most Pakistanis dropping, and this attack will accelerate the trend. In the battle for hearts and minds 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.