Pakistan: kicking the can down the road

40,000 Pakistanis have perished in targeted attacks since 2001. It is the government's responsibility to halt this weekly carnage

Three months after he came to power, Nawaz Sharif's counter-terrorism policy is in tatters. He was elected on a promise to hold peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban. An all-parties conference called on the prime minister to initiate a dialogue with all "stakeholders". The response of some of those with an interest and concern in the outcome (the dictionary definition) was to blow up 81 Christian worshippers outside a church in Peshawar on Sunday and follow that up yesterday by bombing a bus carrying government employees in the same province, killing at least 17 people. Although Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) denied involvement in one of the worst attacks ever made on the Christian minority in the country, a previously unknown group, going under the Taliban umbrella, did claim responsibility. Although Christians are frequently targeted – in March, a mob swarmed through Lahore's Joseph Colony, setting 150 houses ablaze over alleged blasphemy charges against one resident – they are by no means the only minority to reap the full force of fundamentalist fury. Since last year, over 750 Shia Muslims have been killed in targeted attacks across Pakistan, many from the Hazaras in Balochistan. Figures like these have by now lost all meaning. Since 2001, well over 40,000 Pakistanis have perished in this maelstrom. It is the responsibility of any government, let alone a popularly elected civilian one, to attempt to halt this weekly carnage. Mr Sharif's decision to release Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's former second-in-command, to initiate a peace process between Kabul and the Afghan Taliban, was rightly welcomed. That war, as we have said many times, can only be solved at the negotiating table, and Pakistan's involvement is essential. The drone attacks, which account for up to 3,000 deaths (although these figures are disputed, too), only prolong the agony. But there is a big distance to be travelled from that position to pretending that the Pakistani state can accommodate the agenda of the TTP, al-Qaida and other militant groups. It is also Mr Sharif's responsibility to protect religious minorities and uphold basic rights, as Human Rights Watch said in its recent letter to him. The assumption that buying space for the Afghan Taliban is going to help with the TTP is erroneous. The public discourse in Pakistan suffers from a false binary that the TTP is a function of the drone strikes. The challenge it poses the state is more fundamental than that. Fundamentalism is a product of decades of official complicity, cowardice and appeasement. Sooner or later, Mr Sharif will be forced to realise that. Until then, he is merely kicking the can down the road.