The second unsuccessful attempt on the life of Pakistan's embattled President Gen Pervez Musharraf, only 11 days after the first, underscores the point that someone is indeed determined to kill him.

The assassination bids took place in an area where intelligence hounds were crawling in every inhabited nook and corner. Pakistan has God knows how many intelligence services, some big and some small.

So it is strange that they could not query the explosives carrying vehicles, standing idly at two opposite petrol pumps close to the bridge that was the site of the mid-December assassination attempt.

The incident took place in the Rawalpindi cantonment area, not too far from Corps Headquarters. General Headquarters itself could not be more than two kilometers or so away, not to mention the military's police checkpost.

The assassination attempts on Dec 14 and 25 occurred at a time when Pakistan had become an important member of the coalition in the 'war against terror' led by the US government. Thus, the powers in this war could not but take the attacks seriously.

The US government wants to know who the culprit is while Pakistan's officials stressed that the al-Qaeda network was the main suspect.

Let us look at this main suspect closely: According to this theory, the would-be killers are Islamic fanatics who had no problem acquiring the vehicles and explosives.

Help from within?

Clues emerge from the Dec 14 assassination attempt. There, the would-be killers expertly tied explosives to the underside of a bridge over which the president, with his security detail, was to pass.

The bridge is situated on the main thoroughfare and its vicinity is well populated by military families. It is not more than a few hundred metres from an Army Corps headquarters and there is a military police checkpost on either side.

The placing of the explosives must have taken at least an hour. The military and civilian sleuths could only be supposed to be thick on the ground, as the president passes over the bridge several times a day. How could the unknown assailants do their work undetected?

Another circumstance that puzzles is the knowledge by the intending killers of the exact time, down to minutes and seconds, that Musharraf was to pass over the bridge.

That presupposed help from someone along the route who could calculate the exact time the presidential motorcade would reach that bridge. In the end, the assassins' timer was late in exploding by less than a minute - the delay was caused by a jamming device fitted to the president's car.

This made several Pakistanis to suspect help from inside. The government indignantly denies such suspicions, though it continues to hammer away at the theme that al-Qaeda - and foreigners at that - is after Musharraf's blood for his supposed betrayal of the Taliban and now the cause of Kashmir, the subject of a decades-long dispute with India.

That motivation can scarcely be doubted, though the exact ideological identity of the assassins is still being debated. Al-Qaeda's footprints are everywhere in Pakistan, and Pakistani authorities have arrested the maximum number of its leaders.

It is true that Pakistan is a magnet for all Islamic militants from everywhere. For one reason or the other, Pakistan's name props up every time a terrorist is arrested anywhere.

Islamic political parties

He has either visited Pakistan or was trained there or has transited through it. Its religious parties' leadership, particularly of Jamaate Islami (JI), has high prestige among Arab intellectuals that are attracted by militant Islam.

But it was Jamiate Ulma-i-Islam (JUI), in its two main factions, that was the progenitor of Taliban and is extraordinarily powerful in the two Pakistani provinces of Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province, which adjoin Afghanistan.

Thanks to the popularity of ideas that militant Islam is supposed to inspire, both Taliban and al-Qaeda have a lot of fame, support and protection there. The question is whether the major religious parties in Pakistan share any part of the blame.

Few Pakistanis accuse either JI or JUI of any terrorist action, though each has many front organisations that are virtually militias, well-armed and well-funded. Also, these parties, which constitute the bulk of the religious parties' alliance called Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), have just made a constitutional deal with Musharraf.

They have a share in the power in the governments of the two western provinces that the MMA controls. But the leadership gives no indication of being inclined to violence. On the contrary, it projects an image of moderation, reason and anxiety to strengthen democratic institutions in the country.

Thus, the question is - are the would-be killers related to MMA? No one has raised a finger of accusation at MMA leaders. Musharraf himself is quite at home with them and has just cut a key political deal over a row regarding constitutional amendments.

MMA leaders do exercise an indeterminate amount of influence over Musharraf: they support his regime's key policies from outside while sitting on opposition benches in Parliament.

It is an astute ploy: they have their eyes on the next elections that cannot be too far away and they do not want to be seen on the side of a dictator, yet enjoy power in two provinces. Their workers can meantime go on spreading the message of establishing what they believe are Islam's injunctions.

At the same time, they have disassociated themselves with their earlier progeny, the Taliban and the Kashmir militants. But the latter groups are out there armed and well-funded, though perhaps operating autonomously with the help of some sections of the security apparatus itself. Without this link with the security apparatus, the Kashmir militancy cannot be sustained in the way it has so far been.

The question remains to be answered about the link between these autonomous militant groups with the MMA. In formality they may be different, but ideologically they are not.

Personal hurt

Yet Musharraf's position has to be understood. The government is committed to a pro-US policy, masterminded and run by Musharraf.

Indirectly, the military is also committed to the causes for which Musharraf has become persona non grata with militant Islamic elements.

How are the militant groups tolerated, then, and how can Musharraf cut political deals with the godfathers of the Taliban, if not al-Qaeda?

Circumstances suggest that militant groups, the soulmates of al-Qaeda, have the support of powerful elements who use them when needed. They are focusing on just one person, not all the government or its policies about religious extremists.

Ideology may not be the sole motivation in the assassination attempts, but the personal hurt felt in Musharraf's betrayal of the Taliban and the Kashmir 'mujahideen'.

Otherwise, the rest of the religious lobby in Pakistan is happy enough to cooperate in the political sphere with the general. - IPS