Lahore on Edge as Insurgency Heightens Attacks

JIM LEHRER: Now: A Pakistani city on edge greets the visiting U.S. secretary of state.

Margaret Warner reports from Lahore, Pakistan.

MARGARET WARNER: The streets of the Anarkali market in Lahore overflow with music, vendors hawking their wares, and families gathering the basics of daily life.

Pakistan's second largest city and the capital of its biggest province, Punjab, has always been the country's most cultured and life-loving hub. But a change has come to Lahore: terrorism, and, with it, a fear not known here before. The extremist violence once confined to Pakistan's hinterlands has penetrated its major cities, including Lahore.

The first major blow came earlier this year, when members of a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team were gunned down in a bloody assault. And, just two weeks ago, attackers struck a police training academy, killing 11 officers and recruits.

A nervous Tahira Ifaq was in this market yet, just after a suicide bombing in a similar market in Peshawar killed more than 100. She said she had to be here.

TAHIRA IFAQ, (through translator): This is the first time I have left my house in 10 days, but I had to come out to shop for my brother's wedding.

MARGARET WARNER: Across the alley, wedding fashion shopkeeper Sarvat Nadim's sales are down 75 percent.

SARVAT NADIM SAID, (through translator): The security situation has badly affected my sales. It is the wedding season now, but no one is coming to shop.

MARGARET WARNER: These attacks so close to home have triggered a sea change in Lahoris' attitude about the Pakistani militants and the U.S.-led campaign against them, says Najam Sethi, editor of The Friday Times.

NAJAM SETHI, editor, "The Friday Times": For a long time, Lahoris were those core Pakistanis who said, this is not our war; this is America's war. And, therefore, Lahore was spared.

But now Lahore is on the hit list. And there's been a spate of terrorist attacks which have laid Lahore low, with the result that public opinion here is now changing, and they now see this as their war.

Clinton arrives to virtual lockdown

She laid a wreath at the Iqbal Memorial to the poet philosopher who inspired Pakistan's founding. And she admired the blend of Islamic, Sikh, and Anglo-Indian architecture in the soaring Badshahi Mosque. But her planned visit to Lahore's world famous Sufi shrine was scrubbed for fear of attack.

In a day of meetings with Lahore's leaders in civil society, government, media, and business, Clinton laid out the promising future that more U.S. assistance and economic and social engagement could help bring. But in a session with students at the Government College of Lahore, she was challenged repeatedly about sore points in the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

WOMAN: What guarantee can the Americans give Pakistan that we can now trust you -- not you, but, like, the Americans -- this time of your sincerity, and that you guys are not going to be betraying us, like the Americans did in the past when they wanted to destabilize the Russians?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, U.S. Secretary of State: I think that it's a fair criticism that, after we worked together to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, there was such a sense of success and relief on the part of the government, our government then, that we did not follow through the way that we should have.

MARGARET WARNER: Another asked her about the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, whose requirements many here say impinge on Pakistanis' sovereignty.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: The purpose of the bill is to help Pakistan. That was our intention. That was our motivation.

MARGARET WARNER: The last student suggested his country is suffering terrorist attacks because the U.S. has pressured Pakistan's government to mount offensives against the extremists.

STUDENT: Don't you think that hampers the democracy, because now the U.S. is forcing Pakistan to take actions which, on the other hand, we might not be willing to take?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I think it was the Pakistan government, the Democratically elected government, and the Pakistan military who decided that it was intolerable for terrorist organizations to be seizing large chunks of territory of your country.

A determined foe

But, as she departed, she left behind a city that's settling in for a long siege against a determined foe.

SAMINA RAHMAN, school principal: We just received this, received this fax that the government has closed off toddler schools, Montessoris, kindergartens, nurseries, and play groups.

MARGARET WARNER: Samina Rahman runs several private schools in Lahore which were shut by government order this month after suicide bombers struck a university in Islamabad. She reopened her schools for older children after just three days. But though 80 percent of her students have returned to class, she says the damage has been done.

SAMINA RAHMAN: Oh, it has changed the city beyond recognition. You can't recognize some of the streets. You can't recognize some of the security arrangements.

We have not had a history of violence. When other cities in Pakistan were suffering, we were fortunate enough to be spared. And, so, you know, you don't -- you really -- it's a new experience for us.

MARGARET WARNER: Also new are the added security measures required of all Pakistani schools. Here, armed guards patrol the roof.

After all these attacks, Rahman, like many Pakistanis, feels deep hostility toward the Taliban and its terrorist allies.

SAMINA RAHMAN: It is cloaked in the language of faith. I think it has little to do with anybody's faith, because I cannot imagine any person of faith, of true belief and faith, doing something like this.

MARGARET WARNER: But doubts about the U.S. haven't changed as markedly, as was apparent in the differences heard in the corridors of Punjab University.

First-year student Muhammad Sabi believes Pakistan needs U.S. help in this struggle.

MUHAMMAD SABI: We request our government and yours as well, that collaborate with each other, use your international security agencies and overcome this problem of terrorism in the region as well.

MARGARET WARNER: But Muhammad Amin, member of the conservative religious party Jamaat-e-Islami, was eagerly signing a student referendum protesting the Kerry-Lugar aid package.

MUHAMMAD AMIN: There was no terrorism attack in this area in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, but whenever any area of the world, America arrives there, there are attacks, and so bomb blastings are started.

MARGARET WARNER: It's just these attitudes that Secretary Clinton hopes to begin to change.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret will interview Secretary Clinton tomorrow in Pakistan.