A black widow in Peshawar

EDITORIAL:DAILY TIMES
The ‘piety’ of terrorism’s holy warriors has shown its true colours — the sanctity of the holy month of Ramzan seems irrelevant to them as evidenced by the latest attack against the citizens of Pakistan. On Thursday, two bomb blasts struck the police in Peshawar when, first, a police van was targeted by a remote controlled device (planted in a handcart) that went off when the van was passing through the Lahori Gate area. Five policemen were killed in the attack and many others wounded. A second blast took place in the same vicinity two hours later when bystanders, media crews and medical services thronged the site. It is obvious that the attacker was looking to maximise the damage and casualties by this second strike, possibly to include senior police and other officials, a tactic increasingly in use by the terrorists. Luckily, the suicide bomber was stopped at a check post a little distance from where the crowds had gathered and after throwing a grenade at the check post, exploded her suicide jacket just short of the first bomb blast site. The woman suicide bomber was killed and in all, 42 people, mostly policemen, were injured in both blasts.

It is interesting that the suicide bomber was a woman. The last time a female suicide bomber was employed was when a husband and wife duo blew themselves up near a World Food Programme centre in Bajaur in late June. Does this imply an emerging pattern of recruiting women as suicide bombers? It is no secret that women in our culture, especially in a conservative society like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are hardly ever frisked or searched when it comes to security checks. Where a woman in a burqa is concerned, any chances of being frisked by male police officers are reduced to nil. It seems that the very culture that the terrorists claim to uphold — of keeping a woman untouched by male hands and covered in a burqa as well — is exactly what these monsters are using against us. If women are the new lethal weapons against the citizens and the state then counter-measures must be drawn up to face this threat. Women, especially those in the baggy burqa, need to be searched without exception. For that, female police officers must be stationed at check posts and security stations throughout the country.

Pakistan is in the throes of a convulsion that is eating it up from the inside. The spectre of terrorism is a phenomenon that its perpetrators claim is a struggle in the name of Islam but is, in fact, a bloody stain on the faith it claims to uphold. These murderers will go to any lengths to achieve the mayhem they desire to overthrow the existing order in the country and replace it with an antediluvian return to a historically moribund idea of khilafat (caliphate). They make no distinction between men, women, or children, either as human bombs or victims. Apart from the emerging use of women, they recruit children as young as nine years old for suicide bombings and do not hesitate to attack in cold blood during the holy month. This is not a movement looking to impose a sacred way of life; it is a group bent on domination through terror and blood. The only way to effectively counter this threat is to increase the effectiveness of our intelligence work so that any attacks in the pipeline can hopefully be nipped in the bud. From infiltration into these terror groups to increased monitoring and surveillance, the entire range of intelligence methods and expertise can help slash, if not roll back, the incidence of these attacks