Pakistan: The terrorist landscape

Daily Times

Eid has come and gone. There were moments of joy on the occasion in the company of family, friends and acquaintances, visits to recreational sites (mercifully spared the malign attention of terrorists), picnics and merriment. However, this was the bright side of the country’s picture. The dark side was never far from the surface though, as events proved. This Eid, celebrated amid blood and fear, saw attempted terrorist attacks in Bara Kahu near Islamabad in which a suicide bomber was shot dead before he could explode his vest, but not before he had killed a security guard and injured a few prayer attendees at an imambargah. This foiled attack came in the aftermath of the bombing in Quetta Police Lines on the funeral of an officer killed that morning. While the country held its breath in trepidation at what might yet be in store, the security forces in select parts of the country were active over the holidays. Two attackers were killed in an assault on a Mastung, Balochistan, Frontier Corps (FC) check post. On the other hand, two FC men were injured in a blast on their convoy on the Quetta bypass. A landmine blast in Dera Murad Jamali killed one and injured three persons when their vehicle hit the landmine. A terrorist was gunned down in Matni, Peshawar. The security forces claimed having killed eight persons linked to the Machh area attacks in Bolan the other day in which FC personnel and bus passengers travelling home to Punjab were killed. Other than the fact that all this went on over the Eid holidays, it was business as usual on the terrorist front in the Islamic Republic. Since the PML-N government came to power two months or so ago, the intensity and frequency of terrorist attacks has incrementally increased. This despite the fact that the PML-N, like the PTI, fought the elections on a platform of initiating talks with the Taliban, an offer reciprocated by the TTP until the killing by a drone of their second-in-command Waliur Rehman. Subsequent attacks all the over the country have been justified by the TTP as revenge for Waliur Rehman’s killing. On the other hand, the governments, whether at the Centre or in the provinces, have appeared frozen in the glare of headlights like frightened rabbits. The much-touted “comprehensive” (Chaudhry Nisar’s term) national counter-terrorism strategy continues to elude the light of day. The redoubtable Chaudhry Nisar says the government does not want to launch the strategy in a hurry. That it is certainly not guilty of. But his (and others’) confusion is underlined by the usual mantra he trotted out in Quetta about all our troubles stemming from our involvement in a war that was not ours and into which we were forcibly thrust. Imran Khan echoes him in reiterating that ‘withdrawal’ from the US-led war on terror would deny the terrorists the space to project jihad as revenge for drone attacks and other sundry things. In case Chaudhry Nisar and Imran Khan have not noticed, or forgotten, the US is withdrawing from Afghanistan and the region by the end of next year. We should be worrying about the aftermath of that withdrawal instead of sitting complacently in our comfort zone of ‘not our war’. The Taliban have brought that ‘not our war’ home to us, so the whole chicken and egg conundrum of which came first, terrorism or the drone attacks, seems academic and futile, certainly in terms of policy prescriptions. Ambiguity on the approach to terrorism does not stop our leaders from making statements of intent and will. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reiterates his ‘determination’ to eliminate terrorism. Welcome. But now that ‘determination’ must find shape in the form of a policy, strategy, and implementation, all conspicuous so far by their absence. Vacuums are inherently subject to being filled. If the political forces seem paralysed so far in the face of the terrorist onslaught, the Supreme Court once again has stepped in with a suo motu on the recent violence in Balochistan. Having failed to achieve much in the case of the missing persons, let us hope the apex court has something more positive to contribute in this latest endeavour. Every drop that irrigates the killing fields of the terrorist landscape against them can only be welcomed. But we need more than drops of rain. We urgently need a national effort to tackle the terrorists and return this fertile land to its true self: a tolerant, progressive, modern, forward looking culture and society. Big challenge, so far inadequate response.