Quetta carnage

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

So routine is now thuggish carnage in Quetta in the face of the provincial administration's deafening inaction that the residents of Balochistan's metropolis seem resigned they have to live with it in times to come. Otherwise, the Saturday's terrible bakery slaughter would have triggered such an angry outcry that the administration would have been cowering to save its skin from an outraged public. But nothing of the sort happened. The residents took it as yet another violent bloodshed. And the administration as usual sat pretty, as if it was all calm and quiet in the metropolis. Indeed, it is now since times even hard to recall that Quetta is in the grip of this horrific bloodletting, and is also well on the way of acquiring all the frightening trappings of a Karachi in bloodbath. Bluntly, this gruesome slaughter of the innocent is no lesser heartrending than the incidence of missing persons and mutilated bodies inflicting the province. It indeed is more ubiquitous and more barbaric. Prowling gunmen come swooping, fell numerous innocents in their targeted shootings and vanish unidentified and uncaught. They target individuals; they take on congregations; they target civilians; they take out police cops; they come on bikes; they come riding cars; they kill and maim and then disappear with their deadly weapons. And the administration is just looking on, presenting just a spectacle of helplessness, if not outright unconcern. As this holocaust has been going on now for months on end, it doesn't appear even to have bothered to know who are the perpetrators of this wholesale butchery. At times, some insurgent groups claim responsibility; at times, some rabid sectarian outfit owns up a thuggish assault. But most of the times these grisly massacres are going unclaimed. But whatever it is, the perpetrators have obviously their sleeper cells right inside the capitals where their masterminds, financiers, handlers and guides plot out their vile act. How comes they all stay safe and secure in their lairs without their nestling places being busted and demolished along with them? The provincial administration certainly has its own elaborate network of intelligence units and spooks under the umbrella of its CID department. What are they doing? Sitting just on their haunches, watching all this horrific bloodshed going on listlessly? Why has the administration not tasked its intelligence hounds to seek out the sleeper cells of the thugs, find out their lairs and smoke them out? And if it has, why no heads are rolling out there when this hideous bloodletting is continuing without any let-up at all? And if this carnage is beyond the pale of the provincial security network to stop, why has the Balochistan ruling hierarchy not sought the assistance of the federal agencies? And why have the federal top echelons not themselves offered and provided this assistance whereas the provincial capital of the province is caught up so evidently in a raging bloodbath? Or, are both the provincial and the federal hierarchies itching to have yet another Karachi on their hands? Both must take sense and understand what is in the making. Quetta is just slipping out of the hands of the provincial security apparatus and falling fast in the lap of the thugs of all hues and stripes. The criminals are stalking there. The sectarian demons are prowling there. The insurgents are roaming there. The kidnappers are blithely engaged in their devilish trade of abducting people for ransom. And hired guns are doing a roaring business of murdering and maiming the innocent for a price. All this is more than evident. Yet the incumbent provincial hierarchy first just slept over this fearsome phenomenon. And when in the face of the people's taunts and shrill, it woke up at long last, it woke up only sleepily. Not yet is it fully awake while the time is running fast and the city is sinking deeper into a bloody morass. Will it come fully alive to the fragile security situation of Quetta only when it has spun out of total control irretrievably? When indeed will it wake up to its bounden responsibility to the residents to give them security of life and safety of property? Will chief minister Nawab Aslam Riasani ever understand that his primary job is to govern and administer his province, not to pass time in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi? His seat of power, Quetta, is in flames and he is still to demonstrate if he is any pushed about it. What an irony! And what a pity!