Two days and three bombs have once again left Peshawaris dead and injured. On Thursday a car bomb exploded at a bus stand in the north of the city on Kohat Road, killing 13 including two children and injuring at least 35. There does not appear to have been a specific target for the attack. All of the dead and injured were civilians. On Friday in an attack on the Kotwali police station in the heart of the city three suicide bombers killed four policemen and injured six. They threw grenades as they tried to storm the police station, and a firefight with police ensued. In another incident on Friday in Peshawar a small bomb exploded near a police picket on Ring Road near Afridi Garh; injuring one person.
The “Abdullah Azzam Brigade” has claimed responsibility for the attack on the police station, saying it was in retaliation for ongoing operations in various parts of the Tribal Agencies; and specifically a response to the killing of a senior militant commander Badar Mansoor in a drone strike in Waziristan. The militants are clearly able to mount sophisticated operations against the forces of law and order. They are utterly ruthless, caring not for the lives of women and children, the elderly or the infirm, and appear to have the capacity in the long term to recruit and train young men willing to blow themselves up in the name of their ‘ideals’. This is perhaps the most worrying aspect of such attacks. Multiple bombers, young men in almost all such cases, were brainwashed into believing that what they were doing was right and proper. In all likelihood they were little educated and came from poor or deprived backgrounds, and are easy pickings for the militant recruiters who lure them with tales of eternal salvation and heavenly rewards. As long as a the state fails to educate its children and free them from the clutches of deprivation, it merely provides fertile ground for the growth of extremism and militancy. Education and prosperity are the key to our future, murder-by-militant the future if we fail to deliver it.
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