Pakistan - More carnage

Just two weeks after the attack on an imambargah in Shikarpur, yet another suicide attack at a Shia mosque during Friday prayers, this time in Peshawar, killed 20 people and injured nearly 50 others. These words are easy to say, but behind them hide the multiple tragedies people face when loved ones are killed so unnecessarily as a result of terrorist action. In this case, the Taliban have already claimed responsibility for the attack. The TTP and its allies are obviously a national problem but each attack on Shias serves as a reminder that they bear a particular hatred for the sect. What is clear to the rest of us still hasn’t filtered to the top of the government, which is yet to move meaningfully against specifically anti-Shia groups in the mainstream. It is clear too that the state has limited ability to cope with this menace. After the Peshawar school attack of December 16, the highest level of security was ordered in the city. PM Nawaz Sharif told army chief Raheel Sharif that over 10,000 militants had been detained after the APS attack but we cannot be sure how many of the arrests are meaningful and how much of this is just a PR exercise.

Just a few hours after the attack Nawaz received a briefing on the implementation of the NAP and was told that the admission of foreign students to madressahs would be banned and more cases would be sent to military courts. After the Hayatabad tragedy, though, such measures seem to be too small-scale to be effective. Mushtaq Ghani, a minister of the ruling PTI in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, demanded that the entire Frontier Constabulary be returned from other parts of the country to the province. While it is true that the FC was set up to guard the border between KP and the tribal areas and that is has deviated from this mission by providing security to VIPs, this idea once again will be of limited use. The TTP and other militant groups have extended their tentacles to the rest of the country and have a significant militant presence everywhere. This is also why Operation Zarb-e-Azb alone, no matter how successful it may be, is not the final answer to the militant problem. We have tried other approaches, with Raheel Sharif recently explaining how he is constantly working with Afghanistan to have Mullah Fazlullah and other TTP leaders extradited to Pakistan. The threat we face is very real and has grown into a bigger monster. We need to take drastic action if we are to tame it. But with every new, sadly predictable, attack there is less and less confidence in the government’s ability to keep us safe.