NEWS
A group of heavily armed terrorists stormed a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base Faisal, named after the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The air base, situated 10 km from the Quaid-e-Azam International Airport in the port city of Karachi, was attacked at about 2230 hours on May 22, killing at least a dozen people and injuring several others. An adjacent naval facility PNS Mehran was also targeted where two navy planes were destroyed. The Pakistani Taliban, along with Al-Qaeda, has vowed to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a US Special Forces operation in Abbottabad on May 2 this year. Reportedly claiming responsibility for the operation, the Pakistani Taliban have threatened to launch more attacks.

VIEWS
Even as the Pakistani military and the government were trying to grapple with the international embarrassment on account of the raid on Abbottabad by the US Special Forces, a handful of militants, believed to be from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistani Taliban, mounted an audacious attack on a strategically important defence facility killing over a dozen personnel and destroying two four-engine P-3C Orion maritime reconnaissance aircraft of the Pakistan Navy.

While suicidal blasts in civilian locations have become a routine affair in Pakistan, attacks against military installations have been on the rise especially in the recent past. In an attack barely ten days ago, suicide bombers of the TTP killed over 90 recruits at a paramilitary training centre near Peshawar. Earlier in 2009, in an attack by a suicide squad of the TTP on Pakistani Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi, 23 people were killed. The attack on PNS Mehran was perhaps just as deadly.

The episode on May 22 wherein two P-3C maritime reconnaissance aircraft were targeted in the attack on PNS Mehran is of special significance. The Pakistan Navy is a part of the US-led international naval force which supports NATO operations in Afghanistan and plays an active role. This force, that has had a counter-terrorism role since the beginning of US operations in Afghanistan, is responsible for preventing hostile activity originating from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean which could hamper operations in Afghanistan. In April last year, reconnaissance capability of the Pakistani Navy both over land and sea, received a boost with the induction of two of the seven latest versions of P-3C Orion aircraft on order. The attack on PNS Mehran has certainly blunted the edge of a potent weapon system and eroded the capability of the Pakistani Navy to conduct anti-terrorist operations. While there is very little explicit collaboration between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP, both have a declared common enemy, the USA and in its wake, the Pakistani military establishment. And given the resolve to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden, in all likelihood, there could have been inspiration from, if not direct involvement, of Al-Qaeda.