Pakistan: Nanga Parbats: Tourists under attack: WHY THIS?

If the country's name stood already trashed internationally for the stalking terrorism mowing down the people freely like flies in every nook and cranny of the land, the Saturday's horrific lethal terrorist strike on foreign tourists at Nanga Parbat base has reduced it just into dust. In every world street, the country's image lies in tatters. Yet the hierarchs seem still stuck up with their self-imbibed assumptions having not the remotest bearing with hard realities. Even as the thugs claim responsibility for every blood-soaked terrorist assault in these times too, it is not loathing but indulgence with which the hierarchs view them. Indeed, it is the state security apparatus at which they look with suspicion, censure and disparagement. And no doubt they leave about it that in the dock they hold the security apparatus, not the terrorist axis, for the stomach-wrenching bloodshed being inflicted on this hapless nation so callously in suicide bombings, bomb blasts and terrorist attacks. And, stunningly, with no reasonable ground on their back they feel cocksure they can woo over the compulsive merchants of death and destruction to sanity. Indeed in a damning manifest of their intellectual shallowness and superficiality, they have unthinkingly taken to the jingle that no problem has a military solution and all are amenable only to political solution. But where in the world monstrosities like terrorism have been tackled only by political means? Hasn't it been prostrated with a combination of military and political methods? And hadn't political part become effective only when the security action became decisively powerful and strong? Aren't these verifiable facts widely known worldwide? Then, why are our hierarchs playing so purblind? Why are they still averse to come to terms with this hard reality and think of a grand national counter-terrorism strategy to come to grips with terrorists both militarily and politically? Why indeed are they playing ducks and drakes with something posing existential threat to the nation? Instead of going for something serious, they are amazingly hinting at convening an all-parties conference on terrorism. What a prank? What spectacular would this circus show produce this time round when in the past it just came a cropper always? When indeed was it that our political parties were packed up with Aristotles, Socrates and Platos? When was it that these were thronged with great thinkers of tremendous vision, having no time at all for trite clichés and populist slogans and all the thirst for creative thoughts, profound ideas and innovative solutions? When indeed was it that this circus show produced something so splendid that the street flung into a binge of dance and song and the thinking class was dazed by its brilliance and sheen? What good really could you expect from this politicos' jamboree when the political parties and even religious groups are generally believed to be part of the problem, not the solution, at least in the Karachi port city that has become veritably a live killing field where no less than a score of people are done in daily in targeted shootings, gun battles, bomb blasts and terrorist attacks? Hasn't the honourable Supreme Court said it in so many words not long ago? And what dispassionate proposal could you honestly expect from the rightist parties and conservative groups whose own religiosity lags not a tad behind the militants' among the swarming terrorist mob, who ostensibly pose to be religiously-motivated? How many terrible Nanga Parbats have to happen to shake out the incumbent hierarchs from their pet assumptions and tell them tellingly that it is not a political circus show but a counterterrorism strategy that needs to be hammered out quickly and put in place for a sustained, vigorous and result-oriented implementation? The hierarchs must keep one thing in mind. If the terrorist keep prowling all over the land bloodily, which idiot in the world would even think of putting money in projects and factories in this country? And if presently foreign principals of enterprises here call up their Pakistani executives or other interested parties to Dubai for business talks, now that the TTP has announced floating of a special killer squad to murder foreigners, won't those foreign entrepreneurs henceforth stop meeting even those Pakistanis fearing that they may be disguised terrorists? The prime minister should hence waste no time in convening a top-level inter-provincial security conference to hammer out a comprehensive, multidimensional national counter-terrorism strategy and put it under execution at once. The multifaceted terrorism monstrosity's viciousness has gone too far to hurt the country and the nation incurably. Apart from federal interior, defence and finance ministers, foreign affairs advisor, all the three services chiefs, and federal intelligence agencies' head, he must invite all the chief ministers, AJK prime minister, GB chief minister and KP governor, along with their security and intelligence chiefs to work out this strategy.