Fighting terrorism

The Frontier Post If the deadly suicide strike on Data Darbar shows vexatiously how vulnerably is caught Lahore in the vortex of a prowling terrorism, it also exposes worryingly how terribly wanting is the state apparatus in fighting this monstrosity. Now for pretty long, the provincial metropolis is being soaked with innocent blood by this stalking terrorism. Not just vulnerable civilian targets has it struck lethally. It has murderously attacked seemingly impenetrable security establishments and defence facilities in the city, too. Yet appallingly no methodical or systematic strategy or effort is in evidence to curb this monstrosity. After every strike, the city administrators and law-enforcers promptly come out to tell cheekily that the head or the legs of the thuggish striker have been found as if they have done a marvellous job of their responsibility to protect the citizens’ lives and safeguard their properties and the state establishments. Little do they realise that their prank to cover up their inexcusable failure grates sourly on a harried citizenry yearning to hear of no heads or legs found but of having busted the lairs of these thugs of death and destruction, of having hobbled them on their legs, and of having defanged them and decapitated them from perpetrating their vile acts. Indeed, there is perturbing hiatus to the act of the state in fighting this vicious monstrosity. Presently, Lahore may be in its bloody grip. But no other part of the province as also of the country is immune from its wickedness. Terrorists strike wherever they want and whenever they will. And if in the past they had Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in their evil sights with its metropolis of Peshawar bearing the brunt of their evilness quite too often, it appears now they have shifted their thuggery to Punjab to drown its capital city in particular in bloodbath. That smacks of a systematic coordinated scheming. But the state deplorably shows no such methodical endeavour to smash their conspiracy and finish off their cruel bloodletting business. Months ago, the prime minister had convened a top-level inter-provincial security conference to formulate a counter-terrorism strategy. And it did hammer out quite an impressive comprehensive plan involving a coordinated effort at the federal, provincial and local levels to take on this monstrosity with full state might. But either that plan has fallen a prey to the crusher of the official rut or is being pursued at best half-heartedly. Its envisaged coordination at various official tiers, so essential in fighting a war against an invisible monstrosity like terrorism, is nowhere perceivable. In fact, a tiff over the putative wellsprings of terrorism in Punjab keeps the provincial top political and administrative hierarchies at loggerheads with the federal interior ministry, with the latter insisting that the province’s southern parts have become a lair of fanatical extremists and terrorists and the former stubbornly in denial of this and seeing only politics in this federal assertion. It really is so shocking and exasperating that something so grave as a matter of life and death should become political football so churlishly and insanely between the state’s two centres of power. Curiously, as the monster of terrorism is perceptibly baring still lethal fangs to kill and maim our people to wipe out all their sense of safety and security and so destabilise our polity, there is no evident effort on the official corridors even to understand this monstrosity which is increasing becoming intricately complex to tackle. Believably, it is no more a one-dimensional phenomenon. It is an evil complex of motivated terrorists, plain mercenary murderers, criminal gangs, mafia syndicates, sectarian fanatics, and proxies and agent provocateurs of inimical foreign powers and agencies. And if not tackled now, this evil complex will surely become all the more intricate and hence intractable and very hard to overcome, even by the army which already is too overstretched with fighting militancy in tribal and settled areas. The prime minister must therefore reconvene the top-level inter-provincial security conference to review the working of the counter-terrorism strategy and rectify its shortcomings to make it effective and result-oriented. The participants, too, must come to the conference with open minds all shorn of political inhibitions and reservations. A secure and safe Pakistan free from all terrorism, militancy, criminality and rabid religiosity is in the interest of all, the political strands included. Saved from: http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ed&nid=406&ad=03-07-201