Next on terror hit list: Pak's nuke installations

The audacious terror strike on the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi has once again raised concerns about the safety of nuclear establishments in that country, and experts believe that it may be only a matter of time when terrorists could target nuclear installations with the same tactics and intensity.

Shaun Gregory, a professor at Britain's Bradford University and an expert on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, said though severely bruised in its own back yard, the Pakistan Army is the only determining factor that stands between the nuclear weapons and terrorist organizations such as the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

'The only thing that stands between Al-Qaeda and nuclear weapons is the Pakistan Army,' The Globe and Mail quoted Gregory, as saying.

'It is an incredible shock that terrorists can strike at the heart of GHQ. Terrorists could mount this sort of assault against Pakistan's nuclear installations,' he added.

He highlighted that all the terror strikes in Pakistan in the recent past have been suicide attacks, but the GHQ attack was more of a commando attack carried out by well-trained jihadists.

Gregory expressed apprehensions that such military-style tactics could be used against Pakistani nuclear sites.

While fingers were being pointed towards various banned Islamic terror organizations for the GHQ attack, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba, which receives covert support from the Inter Services Intelligence, a famous Pakistani journalist stressed that it was high time when the 'bad' religious extremists should be called bad.

'Perhaps the attack on the GHQ may prove to be a watershed that compels the security and civilian establishment, as well as most of the opposition groups, to realize that the time to distinguish between (so-called) good and bad religious militants or Taliban was over, and a consensus was needed to confront all such groups as enemies of the state,' said Zaffar Abbas, an editor at Dawn.