Pakistan - Mardan bombing

The year 2015 will close with yet another deadly reminder that despite the strides made in the battle against terrorism, the fight is far from over and critical lessons about the nature of counterinsurgency are still not being learnt. The price of this failure of the authorities to appreciate the evolving tactics of the militants is paid by innocent civilians who are going about their daily routine, as happened in Mardan the other day. The suicide attack, which targeted the local National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) office, killed 26 people and injured more than 50 others. According to police reports, the bomber, carrying approximately 10 kilograms of explosives, was travelling on his motorcycle and wanted to target the large queue of around 400 people waiting outside the NADRA office. The only reason the attack was not more deadly is the bravery of the office’s guard who laid down his life to prevent the bomber from ramming through. The attack was then claimed via an email released by Jamaatul Ahrar, wherein it claimed to have targeted NADRA because it is an organ of the state. Interestingly, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the parent group of Jaamatul Ahrar, distanced itself from the attack with the statement that they “have nothing to do with attacks at public places”. Perhaps this reflects TTP’s desire to ‘rehabilitate’ its image after the APS massacre resulted in the elimination of the residual sympathy they hadd from certain sections of the public. Regardless of the TTP’s statement, the attack clearly demonstrates that the danger of the terrorists’ riposte is still as present as ever and the growing sense of complacency around the anti-terrorism drive is starting to get perilous. Reading the responses given by police officials in the immediate aftermath of the attack provides a good illustration of this worrying lack of alertness. For instance, the Regional Police Officer was dumbfounded why the militants chose the NADRA office as their target since this was not a location the law enforcement agencies had any intelligence about. The focus of the police was instead on high profile security installations only. This reveals that even though there have been enough incidents over the past few months that make it clear that militants reeling from Operation Zarb-e-Azb have shifted their focus to ‘soft targets’ in smaller cities where large crowds gather, the police and security agencies have not adjusted their protocols and strategies accordingly.

The received wisdom was that the retaliation from the terrorists would be felt in the big city centres. Fortunately that did not come to pass. The less fortunate part of that equation, however, is that these retaliatory attacks are instead being felt at the ‘less’ obvious locations, where the reach and surveillance of security forces is thin. The great challenge for the state is to come up with a counter-terrorist infrastructure that can cope with this insidious menace, or else we will continue to see an increase in the never-ending list of victims of terrorism and grieving families. The first major impediment to the construction of such an infrastructure is the contagious complacency that is fed by frequent laudatory proclamations of having defeated terrorism already. It badly needs to be recognised by those in the security forces that there is a long way to go, and that a lot more apart from simple military operations is needed before any confident positive prognosis can be made. Unless this complacent mindset is challenged, the much needed urgency to revamp the security architecture will not be evident. The second major problem is the divisions and cleavages amongst the various security agencies and forces. These divisions are not only along civil-military lines but also along institutional lines. As a result, there is little to no timely intelligence and information sharing. This harmful divide needs to be ended. The need of the hour is for a streamlined counterterrorism architecture with shared intelligence, a shared database and pooled resources. There is a plethora of militant groups and networks within Pakistan that have both the willingness and capability to launch an attack at any given point. And these groups in fact benefit from the presence of multiple security agencies since they are able to slip through the gaps of information and cracks created due to a lack of agency cooperation. The fight against terrorism cannot be won if the relevant security forces are acting with incomplete information and in an uncoordinated manner. It is high time this problem is resolved.