Taleban strike back

The Taleban seem to be on a rampage. For the last couple of months they have targetted important government installations, and killed people who mattered in the war against terrorism in Pakistan.

The Saturday’s deadly attack on a political party’s office in Peshawar, which killed at least eight people including a senior provincial minister, just went on to confirm that the militants are scot-free and a decade long controversial onslaught against them hasn’t made any difference. The ill-fated minister who belonged to a nationalist party of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and his family including his brother who is a sitting federal minister, had been at the vanguard in opposing the Taleban’s rise and their making inroads in civil society. Deceased Bashir Bilour had been on the hit list of the militants, and a couple of attempts on his life in the past were reflective of the fact that the Taleban are unrelenting and no amount of state-machinery could unnerve them from their objectives.

The point, however, is that the attack came under circumstances that proved beyond doubt security lapse on the part of the government. If reports are to be believed, the suicide bomber made himself quite comfortable for a long period of time in a public meeting taking place at the minister’s political party office in a busy downtown commercial area, and had all the luxury to blow himself up when the minister started addressing the gathering. This is too dangerous to be analysed as another incident of terrorism, and the need of the hour is to closely scrutinise not only the security decorum of the terror-hit landscape but also to recast political priorities in a better way so that the dozen or so militias roaming around with impunity could be tackled in a proper way.
It goes without saying that the state of Pakistan has skeletons when it comes to dealing with jihadists and militants, and the very fact that sections of the establishment come to align themselves with a particular group or ideologue is the bone of contention. Pakistan is in troubled waters. The political leadership has a gigantic task to steer the nation out of crisis, and that too with resilience and foresight. The menace of terrorism can’t be addressed through piecemeal measures. Islamabad’s focus on eradicating it with use of force seems to have backfired. Now is the time for the embattled government to open up a convincing political front to tackle the issue in a holistic manner. The earlier the Taleban are reached and engaged for a tête-à-tête the better.
Khaleej Times