Claiming responsibility for Sunday's bombing in the northwestern city of Peshawar, the group Jundallah gave the attack a political dimension, saying it targeted Christians to avenge the deaths of Muslims killed by U.S. drone strikes—painted among militants as part of a “Christian campaign” against Islam.
“This is a new dimension, a new direction to attack the Christian community at large,” said Cecil Shane Chaudhry, acting executive director of the National Commission for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group established by Catholic Church.
In the past, militants have instead been focused on attacking Pakistan's minority Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims, seen by Sunni extremists as heretics. Now he said Christians have been added to their list.
“It definitely is something to be worried about,” Chaudhry said.
Its emergence highlights the enormity of the problem facing Pakistan as the new government works out a policy against militants. A complex array of independent but semi-connected groups makes up the country's terrorist mix. Groups morph and diverge, often with divergent and even opposing goals, some acting out a radical vision of Islamic law, some angered in the war in neighboring Afghanistan, some shifting among those and other motives.
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