Pakistan: Ostrich approach: Minister’s killing

THERE is a depressing familiarity to the chain of events in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: the provincial PTI government talks up talks; the militants go about their business, killing and maiming, frequently targeting the PTI itself; the government responds by pressing yet more urgently for talks. This time round, after the suicide attack that killed KP Law Minister Israrullah Gandapur on Wednesday, the provincial government has tried a different tack: a special cabinet session on Thursday approved the creation of a special anti-terrorism force for the province. Part of a raft of ‘getting tough’ measures announced by the KP cabinet, a special anti-terrorism force can seem from afar as a serious measure taken at last by the PTI against terrorism. But the view from the ground in the province suggests a different reality. The province already has a rapid reaction force and an anti-terror squad and to simply sanction a new force to be drawn from various existing forces is unlikely to meaningfully address KP’s terrorism problem. The basic problem with the new measures announced to try and take on terrorists in KP is that they cast the issue as a law and order one. The security breakdown in KP is far more than just an ordinary law and order problem. There is an organised, trained and well-equipped set of militants in KP and Fata with the explicit agenda of overthrowing the Pakistani state. That is a very, very different problem — and far greater in severity — than more typical law and order issues such as mafias and criminal gangs operating in urban environments. To effectively combat terrorism, the full spectrum of the state’s power needs to be brought to bear on the problem — from direct action against the hardened core of active militancy to slowly rooting out the infrastructure of jihad that continues to radicalise and recruit parts of the population. Of course, the problem is that the PTI leadership continues to miscast the origins of militancy here, seeing the threat as essentially rooted in external factors instead of a long-running and pernicious domestic process. Until that changes, until the PTI accepts that dialogue alone will never truly roll back militancy, the threat of terrorism will never really diminish. In opting for the creation of a new anti-terrorism force, the PTI appears to at least be inching towards the realisation that the carrot of talks cannot really work in isolation. But there is a long, long way to go before the PTI arrives at a more realistic understanding of KP’s terrorism and militancy woes.