Pakistan: Heart-rending carnage

THE FRONTIER POST

A black Thursday it was verily. Over 126 innocent people lay dead and many more gored on the awful day in Quetta, Mingora and Karachi in terrorist attacks. And where is the state? The country has been in the throes of terrorism over these past five years or so. The monstrosity has swallowed no less than 50,000 of our innocent civilians during the period. They include toddlers, children and women. And apart from men in uniform, at least 5,000 of them, professionals, religious scholars, academics, lawyers, doctors and civil servants in scores have fallen prey to the prowling monstrosity. Even political leaders and workers it has done in. Yet it has lost no sleep amongst the incumbents. Driven to sleepless nights they are by a Tahirul Qadri, even though he poses no threat to the state but only to the hegemony of the entrenched political entities on the nation’s all politics and the elitist state system they have engendered to serve their vested interests. But no nerves are wracked in those high places over the viciousness of this monstrosity that threatens the very existence of the state and is undeniably the biggest internal security threat to the country presently. No counter-terrorism strategy or action plan have the incumbents, both federal and provincial, evolved as yet to fight out this monstrosity, even as there has been no slowdown down whatsoever in its vileness and instead it has only been in ascendancy. Appallingly, the incumbents remain all obsessed with their petty politics, wholly unmindful of the perilous way the monstrosity is pulling down the ship of the state. No special committee of the federal cabinet has ever been formed throughout to plan and oversee a campaign to counter terrorism. Why? No exclusive task forces have been established by the provincial governments to take on terrorists. Why? And why indeed it is all cool on both the federal and the provincial official corridors? Their security apparatuses are just hibernating. Why no heads roll after a terrorist strike? The law-enforcers seem to have been assigned the task to only assess the weight of the explosives used in a thuggish assault, not to prevent its use. They seem to have been further tasked to cordon off the stricken area and search for the thugs. It doesn’t matter that that causes only inconvenience to the public. Terrorists, after all, do not go for window shopping or loitering in the area after the strike. They make their escape good instantly. But where are the intelligence agencies of the state? Where are the CIDs and spooks of the provincial governments? The terrorist outfits are not all unknown. The extremist organisations, too. Even those outlawed operate quite freely publicly under new banners. They all maintain their sleeper cells and lairs in the urban areas. Then why have the intelligence services failed so spectacularly in penetrating the terrorist and extremist outfits to reach out to their masterminds, fundraisers and arms suppliers and burst them up internally? Why have they come such a cropper in tracking down their urban sleeper cells, lairs and hideouts and dismantle them lock, stock and barrel? Is it because those services have not been tasked to carry out this job? And if they are, is it because no questions are asked and no answers are demanded? Or, what? Why indeed the task of fighting out terrorism has been left to the military alone and why has the civil power taken idly such a backseat? Isn’t fighting urban terrorism primarily the responsibility of the civilian security apparatus? Isn’t keeping the proscribed sectarian outfits out of action the job of the civilian administrations and the provincial governments? Isn’t going after the purveyors of message of hate the domain of the local administrations? Isn’t keeping an eye on the stranger and the suspect the bounden duty of the city cops? Then, why this idleness of the civil power? Why this washing hands of the civil power of a responsibility that it cannot wish off in any event to fight out a monstrosity that can be subdued and beheaded only by a combined action of the state’s military power and civil power? When indeed will the incumbents come out of their stupor and do something to face up to a monstrosity that has become a lethal existential threat to the country? Or, how many more black Thursdays is this beleaguered nation destined to see until they lay down their batons in the coming month or two?