Americans to buy Peshawar Pearl Continental Hotel

LAHORE: Despite the June 10, 2009 death of five members of the infamous American security agency, Blackwater Worldwide in the deadly suicide attack on the Peshawar Pearl Continental Hotel, the Americans have decided to purchase the ruined building of the lone five star hotel in the NWFP capital and convert it into the American consulate building. Blackwater Worldwide, a private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark, has played a considerable role during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a contractor for the United States government.

According to well placed diplomatic circles in Islamabad, the plan to turn the PC hotel into the US consulate has almost been finalised as the hotel management has almost packed up everything and sent over 300 employees home. “We have been informed that the company has been running into losses. Therefore, most of the employees working on contract, daily wages or regular were terminated a few days ago”, said one of the affected hotel employees. About 350 employees had been affected, many of whom had been working in the hotel for 25 years. However, the hotel management claims that the terminated employees had been given one-month advance salary. Before the bombing, over 400 employees were working in the hotel.

Eleven people, including staffers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as five staff members of the American Blackwaters, were killed and over 50 wounded when a mini-truck loaded with explosives was detonated on the premises of the Pearl Continental in Peshawar on June 10, 2009. Repair work is still underway in the hotel and over 50 rooms and lobbies have been repaired. Interestingly, the Peshawar Pearl Continental Hotel was at the centre of a US plan to establish a long-term presence in Peshawar. Well-placed sources say, before the bomb explosion, American experts had visited the hotel site and made some soil tests to hire the place for the US consulate complex. Peshawar is an important station for gathering intelligence on the tribal area that surrounds the city on three sides and is a base for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

An al-Qaeda-linked militant organisation, Abdullah Azzam Shaheed Brigade, had claimed responsibility for the Pearl Continental Hotel bombing, saying the attack was in retaliation to the ongoing operations by the Pakistani armed forces at the behest of the United States in Swat district and other parts of the NWFP. A spokesman of the organisation, Ameer Muawiya, phoned reporters in Kohat city of the North Western Frontier Province to claim responsibility for the Peshawar attack, saying the prime target of the attackers were foreign security personnel from the United States who had been using the Pearl Continental hotel building as their headquarters.

However, there are rumors that the Pakistani military authorities are reluctant to allow the US to buy the hotel and have its lodging and boarding facility in the neighbourhood of the Corps Commander House and the Pakistan Air Force Golf Club, which are adjacent to the PC hotel. Under the proposed consulate plan, offices of the United States Assistance for International Development (USAID) and its partners will be accommodated in the new complex. Currently, the American consulate in Peshawar is functioning in a rented house in the Cantonment area and the main road passing in front of the compound has been closed permanently.

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