Pakistan : Staggering indolence

As at least 14 people lay dead in terrorist assaults in Karachi on Saturday, an advisor of Balochistan chief minister was left gored along with several others in Quetta in a bomb blast the same day. And the very next day, the beleaguered port city saw another four people being killed in terrorist attacks, holding hostage the wretched metropolis since times even hard to remember now. And even as the city keeps reeling from blood-soaked violence incessantly, in spite of the much-touted Ranger-led security operation now running into months, not the rest of the land is any free from the blight either.

Unrelentingly, the monstrosity remains on the prowl all over the country, hitting whatever and whenever it wants. Not a day goes by without its lethality and thuggery being unleashed in some part of the land. It slays civilians and security personnel alike in bomb blasts, terrorist strikes, target shootings, improvised explosive device explosions and suicide hits. Not it kills men and soldiers alone. It slaughters children, women and elderly persons indiscriminately as well. All are its quarries in equal measure. And it is bloodying streets, roads and public places as much as is it soaking the places of worship with streams of blood.

So much of bloodletting would shake out even the most insensate rulers from inertia and throw them headlong into action to relieve their harried citizens from the horrific bloodbath. Even outsiders look at us with both dread and pity, wishing sympathetically for our quick riddance from the lethal monstrosity. But not the incumbents, now ruling the roost in Islamabad, palpably. No strategy or action plan have they hammered out as yet to fight it out methodically and systematically, even as they have been warming the ministerial chairs now for more than seven months.

One can count not how many times has their internal security csar Nisar Ali Khan said that a national security policy is on the anvil. But that elixir still stays there, immobile and veiled. And one knows not what would it be, when from Nisar's outpourings it is more than abundantly clear that the Islamabad caboodle has not even the foggiest idea about the affliction bloodying the nation so horrendously. Their public pronouncements make it unmistakably evident that they have put all their eggs in the dialogue basket to wrestle with the stalking monstrosity. And the elements to be talked with are the tribal areas' militants, and now their Afghanistan-based chieftaincy.

But the murder brigands playing such a dreadful dance of death and destruction on this land are not just the pack of militants the dialogue-savvy honchos of Islamabad have in mind. It is a congeries of heterogeneous vile elements who love to kill and play with human lives. All manner of confessional fanatics, sectarian extremists, professional murderers, hired guns, kidnappers for ransom and foreign proxies masquerading as insurgents have ganged up to spout this evil syndicate that has forged no-lesser-worrisome nexus with the underworld. This lethal mix of terrorism and criminality has worn on murderous clutches with countrywide reach.

This clearly postulates if terrorism has to be battled with, a counter strategy has to be as multidimensional as is the prowling monstrosity. And it has to have a countrywide application as has the monstrosity the countrywide reach. That essentially means two things. First, the strategy has to be extensively broad-based. Dialogue could only be a part of its wide-range that spans over political, security, educational, development and diplomatic fronts. Secondly, it inescapably has to involve intimately both the federal and provincial hierarchies in the fight. Islamabad cannot fight alone. The provinces have to be taken aboard proactively, as unarguably the main battle they have to fight inevitably. But neither do the lethal blight's complexities and intricacies seem to have come any compellingly to Nisar. Nor does he appear any alive to indispensable cooperation and collaboration among the federal and provincial administrations to make for an effective fight. He seems intent on a solo flight. Of course, provincial governments too do not seem to have imbibed the realisation that none can face up to the terrorist thuggery all alone but all will imperatively need full cooperation from one another as well as the centre. Not only strong linkages in intelligence have to be forged between them all but also in security operations. But, by every reckoning, the hub of this multifarious national campaign has to be the federal government. Yet Nisar has evidently not even associated the provincial governments in the formulation of his so-far-elusive security policy. At least the current Islamabad incumbents' predecessors were more realistic on this score. A comprehensive, multifaceted national counter-terrorism strategy had they involved at a top-level meeting chaired by the prime minister. It was attended, apart from federal ministers concerned as well as top bosses of intelligence agencies, by provincial chief ministers along with their intelligence and security chiefs.

In addition to KP governor, even Azad Kashmir prime minister and Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister along with their top intelligence and security chiefs participated. It is saddening that the predecessors showed no zest in working that strategy. But the incumbents have by every indication not even thought of such a moot to evolve a really workable strategy. This indolence is really bewildering and disturbing.