Madras Bombing

I must admit that this is rather odd.

More than 15,000 armed Pakistani tribesmen protested on Tuesday over a Pakistan Army helicopter attack on an al-Qaeda-linked religious school that killed around 80 suspected militants.

Chants of "Down with America" and "Down with Musharraf" rang out as the tribesmen gathered in Khar, main town in the Bajaur tribal region close to the Afghan border, in anger at the air strike.

"Our jihad (holy war) will continue and Inshallah (God willing), people will go to Afghanistan to oust American and British forces," Maulana Faqir Mohammad, a pro-Taliban cleric, told the crowd of turbaned tribals, many carrying Kalashnikovs and wearing bandoliers, and a few shouldering rocket launchers.

While the government claimed the madrasa school at Chenagai was being used to train militants, protesters said the dead, mostly young men aged between 15 and 25, were merely students.

President Pervez Musharraf, speaking at a seminar in Islamabad, said the army had killed militants.

I understand that this is in an area with little central government control, but I'm not certain that this attack was going to stabilize anything. Musharraf has a fairly dangerous position as it is, but swatting your local hornets nest is probably not going to make it much safer.

How else could it have been handled? I'm not really sure. No doubt that all the Al-Qaeda linked people would have been long gone if they had just showed up with ground troops. But killing them all and letting Allah sort them out is a bit too much.