ABSTRACT
On 13 November 2009 at 0645, a van tried breaking through an army checkpoint on Artillery Road in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. Alert guards fired at the van, forcing the driver to explode his bomb prematurely. The ensuing explosion damaged ISI’s three-storey provincial headquarters building and left a crater nearly seven feet deep; the shock wave was felt at nearby Army Stadium, leading many to believe that an earthquake had taken place. An enormous cloud of dust and smoke rose above the city as emergency crews rushed to the scene; at least 12 were killed and more than 60 injured. 1 This attack was only the latest in a series aimed at ISI by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Pakistan Taliban, elements of which were targeting the government and the army. Earlier that year, on 27 May, a suicide bomber struck near the Punjab ISI headquarters building in Lahore, leaving 45 dead and some 290 injured. Two years prior to that, in November 2007, a suicide bomber drove his car into a bus carrying ISI employees outside Camp Hamza in Rawalpindi, killing at least 35. 2
