The blast in Lahore

The ISI should also pay some attention to its role, and should be wary of its new friends, the CIA and Indian intelligence, with which it has been cooperating, with CIA mediation. The War on Terror has found the ISI on the same side as the CIA and RAW, but its officials need to ask themselves whether the price the ISI is supposed to pay for this friendship is limitless or not. They also need to ask themselves whether the CIA's intentions towards RAW and other Indian intelligence agencies are the same as that of its government's towards India, that of setting it up as a policeman against China, or any different. If RAW is supposed to be the regional policeman, the question is not where does the ISI fit in, but is it anywhere visible? And if visible, as what? A RAW auxiliary, spying on China for the CIA? That is perhaps the most appetizing of many futures ahead of it.
One party that stands vindicated by the Lahore blast is the MQM. It had all along claimed that it opposed the coming of the Internally Displaced Persons to Sindh (well, Karachi) because they contained militants within their ranks. On the other hand, the Punjab had an open-door policy. The Lahore police have begun a crackdown on Pakhtuns, an example of racial profiling that does not bode well for the federation. However, the MQM has effectively made the connection which should not be made: that Pakhtuns are militants. There are two major reasons for not making the leap: first, it militates against the concept of Pakistan; second, it is not true.
However, the MQM is casting about for reasons to have held a strike recently, along with the more radical Sindhi parties, against the IDPs entering the province. The strikes led to rioting. However, the MQM has been caught unawares by the IDP issue. There was some resentment among the more perceptive of the Pakhtuns how Altaf Hussain had made the War on Terror an MQM issue, even though Pakhtuns were doing the dying, and it was happening in Pakhtun territory. This resentment was heightened by the American disapproval of the deal the allegedly liberal ANP did with the allegedly illiberal Sufi Mohammad, which has been behind the current operation. When the IDP issue arose, the MQM tried to avoid IDPs contacting their compatriots in Karachi. However, the MQM mistook their IDPs. Very few would settle, mainly because they were only waiting for some semblance of peace, not necessarily the thing itself, to return to Swat, for their own return. This was not the migration of the Muhajir community, nor of the Afghans during the Soviet occupation, nor even of those economic migrants who ended up in Karachi.
But while the MQM insinuation is harmful, it does not mean it is entirely false. IDPs may well include militants, but this is the job of the intelligence agencies to find out and disclose. The blame game developing in the Punjab, with the federal government claiming that its intimations were ignored, is unfortunate, but a likely consequence. The federal intelligence agencies can also send out a rather generalized warning, and not bother to get precise and actionable intelligence. It is probably too much for the federal government not to have been entirely frank with the provincial government which bore the brunt of the attack, because the tussle which exists is at the political level, not that of officials. So a federal intelligence failure may be predicated.
If so, then perhaps the only solution is for the political government to see as its main task the keeping of intelligence agencies' noses to the grindstone of providing intelligence to the provincial police forces, which are the actual forces on the ground for any blast, as was demonstrated on Wednesday in Lahore. The other solution, that of going against the USA in the War on Terror, is a decision for the political government, not the agencies, but there seems no party which will take such a decision.