Mayhem returns to Karachi

Scarily, mayhem seems to have returned viciously to the streets of the beleaguered port city of Karachi, with the monster of terrorism having gulped up at least 16 innocent precious lives in lethal attacks on Tuesday. This is immensely perturbing, to say the least, as it puts into wide question the efficacy of the ongoing months-long operation mounted to pacify this crucial metropolis of the nation that it makes the hub of its economic life. The Rangers who are leading the operation may have, together with their police partners, succeeded in curbing somewhat the wholesale violence and bloodletting to which the outgoing rulers had thrown the poor city and its harried residents to be belaboured so nonchalantly. But the monstrosity of death and destruction is palpably not yet out, not even down. It is still on the prowl and on the rampage, even if not as bloodily as before. But it would be unfair to wholly blame the Rangers and the police for this failure to behead the monstrosity once and for all. Certainly, they must take the blame, but the most of it must go to the political leadership across the board that put them to this task. This leadership should have first grasped fully what the hydra-headed monster it was faced up with and then chalked out a strategy accordingly to grapple with it. That obviously it didn't do, which is more than evident from its approach to deal with the ravaging terrorist violence and carnage in Karachi as an evil phenomenon particular only to the port city that in reality it is not. The bloodshed there is very much part and parcel of the terrorist mayhem that engulfs the entire country variously and hence cannot be dealt with in isolation from the other parts of the land. Appallingly, even as the vile phenomenon of violence and bloodletting is plaguing this unfortunate nation now for years on end, its political elites by and large are yet to comprehend what in reality is this evil. They are yet to understand that what is bloodying the nation is in fact a beehive nest of a well-knit networking of all manner of terrorists, militants, insurgents, murderers, criminals and gangs, with their evil reach stretching all over the country. Ideological firebrands and sectarian fanatics may be a significant part of this network. But drug syndicates, smuggler mafias, criminal gangs, foreign-funded insurgents, separatists and proxies, private militias, plain murderers, hired guns and marauding outlaws make its no insignificant part. Tackling this multifarious beehive nest thus necessarily requires a concrete comprehensive multidimensional strategy with a countrywide operation. Sans this strategy, fighting out terrorism and criminality could, at best, be just a pipedream, even in a localized theatre, what speak of countrywide stage. And so is it with this nation's political elites' favourite pastime of all-parties conference and suchlike talking shops. Verifiably, it is a multidimensional strategy that really matters in the ultimate analysis. And this strategy is not just a security operation. Nor is it just dialogue. It is much more than that. It spans the entire gamut of national life, stretching all over the political, security, diplomatic, administrative, legal, educational and development fronts. It is a very wide-ranging national effort that requires all in the state and its citizens to fructify in triumph. The fight involves not just going after the monsters of vileness with a gun or appeasing them with a sweet tongue. It is a fight on multiple fronts simultaneously. But that seems not even in the remotest thoughts of the political elites across the spectrum. The outgoing incumbents left the field without formulating any such strategy. The present lot has shown no such plan as yet, even as it keeps talking of coming out with one any time. The only instrument that the present lot has unfolded so far to counter the waltzing terrorism in the country is the device of dialogue. But dialogue alone cannot work. That is is what tells the recorded history. And that is what tell the experiences of the countries going through the tribulation of rampaging militancy, insurgency or terrorism. Even as the Colombians have considerably enfeebled and weakened the FARC rebels in a fight over half a century, many are still not sanguine if the fighting will come to an end if the peace negotiations between the government and the rebels reach a positive finality. Some one-quarter of the rebels are widely believed to keep fighting the guerilla war against the state. In the Philippines, some dissidents broke the ranks with the main Moro guerilla outfit, spurning the negotiated peace deal with Manila and they still keep fighting the state security forces, often lethally. And in Nepal, it may not be quite surprising if some Maoist factions walk out of the peace deal with Kathmandu, which they had accepted only grudgingly. And the same may go with the contemplated dialogue foray of our own incumbents. In any case, the vicious beehive nest of terrorism and militancy would keep mauling this unfortunate nation until and unless a comprehensive all-embracing strategy is not evolved and put in place. And Karachi would keep bleeding and crying when the kingpins who have left behind their foot-soldiers and errand boys to keep the beleaguered city aflame are not pulverised in their safe lairs they are hiding in elsewhere in the country or abroad. This is as plain as that.