Peshawar: Failed administrations

The thugs have struck Peshawar for the umpteenth time and yet again lethally, exacting a heavy toll on innocent lives as before. At least 11 people lay dead on the spot while another 17 were wounded, several of them critically. But where is the administration and what its security apparatus is doing? The wicked terrorists carried their deadly arsenal of explosives on a double-cabin vehicle. Obviously, that combustible vehicle had not travelled through some underground tunnel. Irrefutably, it had plied on the city's public thoroughfares in the full public view. And yet quite appallingly it went undetected and without being intercepted all the way when most of the city roads are cluttered with check posts and security barricades.This speaks volumes how meanly are the administrations failing in facing up to the monstrosity of terrorism and how culpably are their security apparatuses putting up a demeaning show of incompetence and feebleness in meeting the challenge of terrorists. After every terrorist strike, you hear the top echelons of the administration making a brave talk. Never ever would they bow down before the terrorists, they chant. But who wants them to bow down. The citizens want them to stand up and take firm steps to deal with the thugs, which they do not. They merely talk, not act. Almost the whole of the country is in the lap of terrorism and extremism and the state is virtually at war with the practitioners of this vile thuggery.But from the act of all the administrations, both the federal and the provincial, you don't get the sense if they are feeling to be in a condition of war. No strategies have they evolved to fight out this menace, even as it palpably makes up the biggest internal threat to the nation's security and the country's stability. No action plans have they put in place to take on the terrorist thugs proactively and aggressively, to snuff out the extremist outfits operating freely and finish off their lairs and sleeper cells in the urban centres. Karachi has veritably become a killing field, where no less than half a dozen people minimally are done in brutally every day in targeted killings and terrorist attacks. Quetta knows not when it would be free, if at all, from the butchery of roaming thuggish guns and the murderers for pleasure. Punjab has become the huge den of extremist and sectarian outfits, while the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa lives on in the lengthening shadows of terrorism perpetrators and suicide bombers unremittingly. But as yet none of the provincial administrations has an answer to this rampaging monstrosity of terrorism and extremism. The only answer they have is that they would not bow down before the terrorists. But the people give a damn if they bow down or not. They want riddance from a monstrosity which is bloodying them horribly. And they are flabbergasted as much at the inertness of these administrations as at the ineptitude and incompetence of their subordinate security apparatuses. If the top echelons of these out-of-the-depth administrations are entertaining the citizens with a brave talk hogwash, their security apparatuses are amusing them with their own theatrics. After every terrorist assaults, they appear on the scene to cordon off the hit spot and harass the innocent citizens instead of going after the thugs. And instantly they start giving out the weight of the explosives used as if their task is only to give this information, not to prevent the terrorist strike.Certainly, the time has come that the administrations should get out of their stupors and get their acts together. Visibly, terrorists are in ascendancy, feeling no inhibitions at all in striking whatever they want, wherever they want and whenever they want. Palpably, they fear no resistance from the administrations and their security apparatuses; they indeed meet no such challenge in carrying out their devilish tasks. If it continues like this, the state will be in retreat everywhere and they will be on the offensive everywhere. The ultimate consequences of this nerve-wrecking phenomenon can well be imagined. The military cannot fight terrorists everywhere. Urban terrorism is fought out primarily by the civilian administrations and their security apparatuses everywhere the world over. And so has it to be here in this land, too. For a change, the civilian administrations have to pull up their socks and get cracking on their security apparatuses to do this fighting. Otherwise, we will have a Peshawar, Quetta or Karachi every other day to the nation's ultimate great gore.