The Lahore carnage

The Frontier Post
This Lahore carnage was heart-rending. The colossal loss it exacted on innocent lives and limbs was intolerably tragic. The bestiality of the perpetrators of this mayhem was unspeakably contemptible. And the collapse of the local state security apparatus in averting this gruesome slaughter too was glaring and at once appalling and indefensible. By every account, the provincial administration had been alerted to the impending strike much in advance by various state agencies. Yet its security arm was found napping. The attackers reached their target sites fully loaded with their deadly weapons in broad daylight without being intercepted on the way. That speaks volumes of the dismal state of vigilance mounted by the security apparatus to prevent such a holocaust. Some heads must roll, although one fails to comprehend what for has the security force drawn praise from chief minister Shahbaz Sharif in the face of so damning facts. Some top cops have sought to deflect their apparatus’s failure by claiming possible Indian spy service RAW’s involvement in the thuggish strike. But that wouldn’t do, given the reported acceptance of responsibility by outlawed TTP’s Punjab chapter. It indeed is the time that the Punjab ruling leadership must come out of its persistent state of denial, come to terms with some incontrovertible realities obtaining dreadfully and worrisomely in the province, and set about robustly to deal with them. It is an open secret that parts of the province, particularly its southern regions, have become the hotbed of rabid religiosity and the lair of blood-thirsty fanatics who have been found never shy or inhibited in brandishing their extremism violently and bloodily. Even this Lahore massacre is in all probability the thuggish evil job of a confessional outfit of these murderous brigands. They need to be dealt with iron hand, sternly, unexceptionably and decisively. Yet, by every indication they are being treated with kid-gloves, instead. And not long ago the citizenry all over the land was terribly horrified watching a law minister of the Punjab government participating in a by-election public rally by riding in a truck with a leader of an outlawed fanatical outfit. Politics, surely, cannot override public security and stability of the polity and the state. And the ruling leadership of the province must understand that if the thuggish elements are not shown the stern face of the state and are shown leniency for political ends, they outgrow to become a formidable threat not just to the lives of the ordinary citizens and law-abiding folks but also to the very writ and authority of the state itself. Indeed, none could be as alive to this factuality as the Mian brothers. It was on their previous watch in the late 1990s that their bastion of Punjab got trapped into an increasingly bloodied sectarian fratricide. The bloodletting was horrific, and only ascendant, not diminishing. For years, the province stayed caught up in this terrible bloodbath, with the blood of the innocent being shed with abandon by the partisan thugs with their bomb blasts and terrorist strikes on mosques and imambargahs vindictively. It took tremendous efforts to restore a measure of sanity. Yet the bestiality didn’t go away altogether. It just slowed down, leaving in its trail the sectarian scars not easy to heal. This alone should bring home to the Punjab ruling leadership, especially chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, the imperative urgent need of showing no accommodation at all to the blood-hungry extremists, mothballing the wellsprings of their religiosity and finishing off their lairs of terrorism. All and sundry must bear this in mind that these messengers of death and destruction are poles apart from what they were in the 1990s. Although various outfits have their own particular vile agendas which they pursue and work for, they have created nexuses between themselves to collaborate in the perpetuation of their thuggery. They have now become a killer syndicate. And if it was an uphill job in those blood-soaked yesteryears to cripple the sectarian thugs, the task of reining in and decimating the extremists now in the province has become all the more gigantic. They can rely on their murderous peers of the country’s northern parts for help as would depend their peers on them when they stand in need of help. For this reason, any more procrastination by the Punjab government in overcoming these extremists and decimating them lock-stock and barrel would lead up to their becoming invincible and impossible to control. Hence, Shahbaz Sharif has no other option but now to take off the gloves and take on this murder brigade resolutely, boldly and unbendingly. This he owes to his own people as also to this country’s citizens at large. He must act before these vile characters become stalking fiends.