Pakistan: Security forces in limbo?

The attack on the Pakistan Naval Station (PNS) Dockyard this weekend is another alarming reminder for the country, the law enforcement agencies and above all for the government that we are at war with terrorists, who will hang around our necks until they are gotten completely rid of. Navy personnel disclosed this news to the media late on Monday. The delay in the disclosure can be explained by the fact that they did not want to give details of an investigation in progress. It is the second attack on a military facility in the last month, the fourth in this year, and umpteenth in this decade. Though all the details have not been shared with the public yet this much is clear, that navy security officials managed to foil the attack, which was apparently aimed at a ship carrying ammunition. They claimed they had captured four attackers alive, while killing two others. During the fight a petty officer was also killed by the terrorists. One of the attackers, it turns out, had previously served in the navy and left only four months ago. The navy says that after the initial interrogations some arrests have been made in different cities including Swabi and Mansehra, where the officials claim to have seized weapons from those taken into custody.

The nature of the attack, led by just a few heavily armed militants, indicates that it was aimed at inflicting maximum damage. This, as it should be clear by now, is nothing but an inexorable repercussion that many experts have been expecting since the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb. That begs the question of whether our armed forces have taken the potential blowback into account and that only clearing North Waziristan of terrorists does not mean the end of the operation. The major threat — and this country’s greatest vulnerability — lies outside the tribal areas, in the cities where terrorists are undoubtedly hiding in sleeper cells and probably waiting for the right moment to strike. By now it is crystal clear that they are present everywhere in the country: the recent encounter in Raiwind and the attack on the Quetta air base testifies to this fact. In spite of the eventual triumph of our security forces in foiling this attack and the ones carried out earlier, one expects more timely and pre-emptive measures from the security agencies in fending off these attacks. Though the army is continuously beating the drums of victory, it is not clear how much their efforts have been fruitful in breaking the urban networks of these terrorist organisations that are spread across the country.