Kohat and more

EDITORIAL:Daily Times



Merciless and vengeful, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has struck once again, this time in a police colony in Kohat. Detonating an explosives-laden pickup inside the compound, just behind the guarded police lines, the blast ripped through almost 300 buildings, including schools, markets and residential homes. The scenes were truly horrific as the majority of the 20 killed were women and children who were inside their homes during iftaar time. It is expected that the death toll will rise as there were still some people trapped under the rubble of the TTP’s latest attack.

Vowing to take revenge for the drone strikes in the tribal areas, the TTP has promised more attacks on security and government officials. Such grim announcements and brutal massacres should not come as a surprise as the past week has demonstrated just how determined the militants are to step up their game now that the military’s attention has been diverted towards flood relief. Anyone who thought that the softest targets in society — women, children and residential areas — would be safe, has not understood the reality of the shadowy enemy we are up against. The militants aim to cause maximum damage, widespread fear and loss of lives to prove their point; what better way than to target the most vulnerable? That is why Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain has urged the security forces to implement well-coordinated and effective action against the terrorists. He has stated that it is vital that military attention be diverted from the floods to the insurgency once again.

After such an attack and chilling warning, it is vital that all efforts be taken to protect such areas. When it has been proclaimed that government, security and police officials are under the most threat, nothing should be left to chance; check-posts, apart from being an irritant, have done nothing to secure the urban and settled areas. We need better intelligence to prevent the militants from moving ahead with their dastardly mission. An insecure security force translates into one that is incapable of securing the citizenry.

As further evidence of the virulent spread of terrorism in all its manifestations, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of Islamia College University, Dr Ajmal Khan, was kidnapped on Tuesday by suspected militants. Dr Ajmal is the cousin of Awami National Party’s Chief Asfandyar Wali Khan. It is suspected that the VC has been taken to the Khyber Agency in an eerily similar fashion to the November 2009 kidnapping of the VC of Kohat University of Science and Technology, Dr Lutfullah Kakakhel, who was also spirited off and kept in captivity by the militants for six months. Targeting senior academics is in line with the Taliban view of obliterating education. Another girls school has been blown up in Kalam. This is sadly a routine activity for the militants.

The terrorists are spreading and setting off their attacks like literal hand grenades in almost all regions of the country — tribal and urban. From Kohat to Hangu, where a blast targeting two police mobile vans killed one constable, and Karachi, where an activist of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat was gunned down, no place seems safe from the grip of terrorism. It is time that a full throttle plan is enforced against this scourge that is making its malignant presence felt every single day.

It is time that the flood relief transitioned into rehabilitation. It is time that the government and civil administration of the country take over managing the flood efforts from the army so that an organised military offensive once again strikes at the heart of the Taliban insurgency. Without the army fully engaging in eliminating the terrorists, such attacks are likely to be witnessed with increasing frequency.