Brutal massacre of Shia in Pakistan

EDITORIAL :Toning up counter campaign

The brutal massacre of 25 Gilgit-bound bus passengers and the thuggish assault on the Kamra airbase once again underscores chillily how deeply flawed and inadequate is the state’s counter-terrorism action. Bluntly, these shattering episodes leave no doubt about it that terrorists still have an upper-hand and the state is in retreat in the face of their unrelenting thuggery. But what else could it be when the state has not come up with any comprehensive coordinated counter-terrorism strategy worth the name so far, even as the country is visibly in the lap of a multi-dimensional terrorism? The kind of concern, action and coordination that such a vile phenomenon should elicit from the state is just not perceptible on any of the official corridors. At best, various state agencies and arms seem working disjointedly and that too for firefighting, not weeding out this scourge from its roots. There indeed is a strange sort of hiatus marking the act of the whole security apparatus to counter terrorism and overcome it. No strategy is in evidence. No action plan is perceptibly in execution. It is all chaos, whereas terrorists are palpably well organised, having forged mutual links, with their tentacles now spreading out to the underworld as well. Fighting out terrorism is always a long a haul. Wherever it springs up it defies leaving soon. And the way things are going on, in our case this long haul is surely going to be infinite unless the state changes its act. At the risk of being repetitive, this government had had hammered out a fairly comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy soon after its debut but only to forget all about it in no time. That poor thing is simply gathering dust on some obscure official shelf. Even the national counter-terrorism authority that was supposed to be the nodal agency of all national counter-terrorism efforts is a long forgotten enterprise. Now one even hears of it not. Nor is anything known about the legislative bill aiming at plugging off holes in the anti-terrorism law that enable terrorism suspects to get off the hook in the courts. Even the army chief has bemoaned the absence of such a counter-terrorism regime. Yet there is no anxiety in the official circles to bring about such a legal regime to deal effectively with the suspects. Statedly, the legislative bill was objected to by two senators of the right-wing clan to whom its own religiosity comes uppermost and the nation’s security only at best secondarily. The bill is lying wholly unattended on some Senate floor now for more than three years. With such an insouciance overwhelming the state apparatus to a virtual condition of utter prostration and emasculation, the less said about the state’s counter-terrorism action the better. Wherever successful counter-terrorism campaigns have been waged, it is always by combining the state’s civil power with its military power. While the military fights out terrorists on mountains and in caves, it is the civil power that takes on the urban terrorism. But that combination arguably doesn’t obtain in our case. While the military is battling terrorists in the field, the civilian security apparatus is leaving urban terrorism almost unchallenged. Not only terrorists are harbouring freely their sleeper cells in cities and towns, the outlawed extremist outfits too are operating there without any obstructions and impediments. Worryingly enough, even the military’s operational preparedness and vigilance to grapple with terrorists leaves much to be desired. The ease with which terrorists have assaulted Kamra and earlier Karachi’s Mehran naval base and Rawalpindi’s GHQ sets the mind at great unease. There indeed is an imperative need to tone up the state’s entire counter-terrorism action. But that can happen only if the state takes the menace of terrorism very seriously and acts accordingly. It is not the lip service that matters. What really makes the difference is the action, not rhetoric. And if even now the government keeps sitting on its haunches and does nothing concrete, not even the elections will be of any avail. The vile thugs are visibly in ascendancy and will keep the state hostage to their wickedness and thuggery. The government must wake up and act before it is too late. Already, it is very late.