Bomb casts al Qaeda shadow on heart of Pakistan

By Simon Cameron-Moore - Analysis

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomb attack that killed 19 people in Lahore, which had been a haven from violence, demonstrates an intensifying show-down with militants at a time when Pakistan is in a volatile political flux.

The blast in the country's political nerve centre on Thursday, near the High Court on the historic Mall boulevard, carried an ominous message ahead of February's national election.

That vote is deemed vital to the future of U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf.

While other cities reeled under a wave of suicide attacks last year which killed hundreds of people and climaxed with the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi on December 27, Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, was untouched.

Now, nowhere is safe.

"We fear that we are becoming Iraq, we are becoming Afghanistan," said Faryal Gohar, a television writer and rights activist, after laying a wreath at the curtained-off site of the blast, which killed 16 police and three passers-by.

The West shudders at the thought of nuclear-armed Pakistan sliding into chaos with Islamist extremists at the gates of Islamabad. Sections of the Western media say Pakistan is the most dangerous country on the planet.

Many Pakistanis live in virtual denial of the scale of the threat, and believe there is some grand conspiracy to take away Pakistan's nuclear weapons, but realisation of the internal threat is dawning.