Khalid Aziz |
One wonders as to how Pakistani elected and selected leaders could claim “success” in an incident, which took seven innocent lives as two of the three suicide bombers who infiltrated into the district courts in Charsadda blew themselves up.
The immediate response of the police was indeed quick as it managed to shoot the third attacker dead.
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The unfortunate aspect of this incident, like so many others, is that our leaders do not seem to realize the seriousness of these incidents with apparently “minor” casualty rate.
Terrorist violence in Pakistan is now entering its second decade and it has reached a level that restricting the enemy to inflict a lesser-than-intended damage is lauded as a success.
In the wake of the present wave of terror, it is high time that we revisit our actions and reactions because terrorist violence continues unabated.
As far as the immediate response of the police is concerned, they acted and shot one of the three suicide bombers. However, if we look a little deeper, there is a string of failures that could be attributed to every institution responsible for security in the country and the people.
Firstly, our institutions have failed to protect our citizens from falling prey to terrorists’ ideology. The extremists successfully managed to brainwash three men to a level that they choose to become suicide bombers.
Second, our institutions are still unable to dismantle the training centers and nurseries where innocent youth are being transformed into suicide bombers.
Thirdly, our institutions have failed to stop the flow of explosive materials and arms to these extremists.
Similarly, our institutions failed to stop the bombers at the stage of planning and from reaching their target.
Moreover, the quality of intelligence shared with security institutions needs to be improved.
These institutions fail to identify the exact locations from where the threats actually emanate or obtain such targeted information upon which the civilian law enforcement apparatus is able to take action.
It does not make sense to claim “success” in the enemy’s inability to inflict lesser damage than they intended.
The police in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have no intelligence support within their own department and have to solely rely on information received from other departments, which could even be outdated or obsolete.
In the wake of the present wave of terror, it is high time that we revisit our actions and reactions because terrorist violence continues unabated.
Mere slogans and shallow action would not help.
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The cornerstone of the fight against terrorism should be the availability of actionable intelligence to enable the police and other law enforcement agencies to bust terrorism at its onset.
It does not make sense to claim “success” in the enemy’s inability to inflict lesser damage than they intended.
Khalid Aziz is a career journalist and presently works for daily The Nation, Islamabad. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial policy. This piece was first published in daily The Nation.