Already reeling from a spate of attacks that left 16 people dead over the last three days, citizens in Khyber Pahtunkhwa (KP) have become easy targets for terrorists because of the inability of the provincial government to prepare for terrorism. Incidents over the course of 24 hours indicate that the terrorist campaign in KP is intensifying, while in Balochistan the sectarian nature of terrorism is proving the limits of law enforcement. A roadside bomb in Kohat left six people dead and 18 injured when it exploded near a passenger van. Police say that three kilograms of explosives were packed into an empty metal container wrapped with ball bearings. Explosive devices such as these have little purpose other than to inflict injury or death on passersby, using pieces of metal to rend flesh. Attacks have become increasingly bloodthirsty and the low cost of such rudimentary explosive devices makes the deaths all the more tragic; at minimal cost to themselves terrorists are able reap a harvest in corpses that will demoralise the public completely.
In Quetta on Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated himself outside a busy shopping centre in the Hazara Town area, killing five people and injuring dozens more. Police say a seven kilogram explosive device was used and while no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) has previously claimed a number of attacks on Hazaras including a mammoth explosion in January 2013 that killed 130 people. It publicly celebrated a ‘century’ of Hazara murders in Quetta earlier this year and its stated goal is ‘purging’ Pakistan of Shias. Despite this the group’s leaders, Malik Ishaq and Ahmed Ludhianvi, remain free of charges for these atrocities. Ludhianvi was even offered a seat in the National Assembly several months ago though his nomination was struck down by the Supreme Court. Ishaq was recently taken back into police custody, but his detention is largely viewed as symbolic rather than effective as he is believed to have masterminded the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team from prison in 2009. Irrespective of their operational roles, Ishaq and Ludhianvi remain the ideological progenitors of the LEJ and it is difficult to imagine that their role in planning attacks on Shias is limited to a symbolic one only.
The striking thing about these attacks is that political considerations seem to be driving security arrangements meant to prevent them. In KP the provincial government has become virtually moribund since the entire leadership is absent and busy organising rallies. Police in the province have complained that the government has not given them any guidelines or support and it seems the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) simply does not believe that terrorism is a problem, a consequence of Imran Khan’s soft spot for the Taliban, evidenced in his stance towards them. Imran does not view the Taliban for what they are, i.e. part of a terrorist movement that is bound by ideology and shares arms, money and men through a network that is now spread from Syria to North Waziristan. It is possible that even the Taliban’s recent outpouring of support for the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq will not change his mind, if indeed he does not agree with their vision of a brutal theocratic state in the first place. The ease with which the bomb in Kohat was placed speaks not only to a lack of security, but also mismanagement that allows terrorists to leave explosive devices virtually anywhere. Rather than taking responsibility for securing urban areas and moving a security cordon progressively outwards, the provincial government has passed the buck to the army, though we have seen that neither the army nor paramilitary forces can be everywhere at once. The LeJ on the other hand is a onetime ‘asset’ that was used in Pakistan’s disastrous proxy adventures in Kashmir. Similar to how the PTI view the Taliban, security agencies are failing to see that the LEJ and other sectarian organizations are far more loyal to global jihadism than they are to Pakistan. In both cases, the failure to view religious extremists as existential threats is allowing terrorists to target Pakistani civilians with impunity.
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