Pakistan: Terrorist offensive

THE FRONTIER POST

On Friday, terrorist struck Hangu outside a Shia mosque and put to death at least 26 innocent civilians. The vile attack was obviously the handiwork of sectarian monsters. On Saturday, terrorists audaciously attacked a military camp in Serai Naurang and killed 13 soldiers and 11 civilians. The outlawed TTP claimed the responsibility. And the two thuggish assaults in two consecutive days tell chillily how fatally is the country in the throes of a vicious multifaceted terrorism. And yet the partisans out there are quarreling obsessively over the creation of new provinces. Of what avail would indeed be new provinces when the country is so visibly enmeshed in a threat from a wild monstrosity that has put its very existence in great peril? Yet none seems much pushed about it. Not even the state. It is now for more than half a decade that the nation is in the grip of this blood-thirsty terrorism. And even as the state functionaries not infrequently assert that with their counter-terrorism actions they have broken its back, it is not even a bit on the slowdown. Rather, it is in ascendancy and on the offensive, while the state appears in retreat. None seems safe from its vileness. Not even the security establishments that indeed have lately been its most favoured targets. That speaks alarmingly of the unpreparedness of the state to face up to this monstrosity mightily. The weakest link in the state's counter action appears to be the provincial administrations and their security and intelligence apparatuses. The country for the most part is in the clutches of urban terrorism. And fighting out this terrorism is primarily the job of the provincial governments, the maintenance of law and order on their domains is whose sole responsibility. Yet, they all have perceptibly taken a backseat, conveniently assuming that combating terrorism is the federal government's, especially the military's, task. This intrinsically is wrong. The military can fight the rebels on the mountains and deserts, caves and forests, but not on the city streets. There the recalcitrant have to be taken on by the provincial law-enforcement agencies and intelligence apparatuses. And yet they all are sitting pretty. Outlawed terrorist outfits are blithely plying their trade of murder and hate under their very noses with impunity. Some have assumed new names, though deceptively but not so deceptively. All know who they actually are. Some have bothered not even to do that and they go by their own old names. One such rabid sectarian outfit has indeed been claiming the responsibility of murderous attacks on the Shia community almost in every part of the country. Obviously, it has its sleeper cells, lairs and hideouts in the urban centres. And yet where are the CIDs of the provincial administrations that this outfit goes on with its bloodshed business unrelentingly without its cells and lairs being tracked down and busted and its network being dismantled in any part of the country? Indeed, this sluggishness of the provincial intelligence networks has come quite handy to the inveterate detractors of this country to vilify and demonise the Pakistani state. They assert, to a great conviction of the world community and to Pakistan's great grief, that these extremist outfits are not being touched by the state security apparatuses as they use them for their own ends inside and outside the country. Even this tirade has failed to impel the provincial administrations to pull out their intelligence and security networks from the stupor and go cracking on them to make them combat the urban terrorism manly. All feel content with their law-enforcers giving the weight of explosives used in a terrorist attack once it has happened. None seems asking them why had they not stopped that explosive from being used. No questions are apparently asked and no answers sought. No heads roll. It is always business as usual. Apparently, there is no watertight collaboration and cooperation either between the federal and the provincial intelligence networks, which is yet another weak link in the state's counter-terrorism action. They rather appear in competition, and worrisomely, in rivalry. This is very dangerous, and irresponsible too. All seem ploughing a lone furrow, whereas an effective counter-terrorism action is admittedly a joint effort and a combined action of various state arms. But, gallingly, no state strategy is even in evidence to combine up disparate security actions into a coherent, concerted and orchestrated effort to attain the national objective of defeating terrorism and throwing it out of the land. And this is very disturbing. The way it is being presently fought, we are visibly losing this war against terrorism. But we have to win it, in any event and at our cost, for our own survival and for the survival of our posterity. The state must come into action, in whole, not in parts. Let there be a national coordinated action to take on the monstrosity of terrorism, to defang it, prostrate it and behead it. This is a must.