Terror in Peshawar

Until our cities are safe and lives protected, it is unwise to claim that we have won the war on terror. In this context it is somewhat ironic that an announcement by military leaders that the massive operation launched against militants in tribal areas was to be wrapped up came just two days before a massive blast aboard a bus bringing passengers from the Charsadda district to Peshawar. The blast, which took place on Wednesday, killed at least 16 people and injured 55 others. In 2012 at least 20 people were killed in a similar incident also caused by explosives placed in a bus. The Mangal Bagh-led Lashkar-e-Islam has claimed responsibility for the attack which it says was revenge for orders issued by the COAS to execute 13 militants sentenced to death by military courts. The group has, we are told, been driven out of Pakistan, but even so appears to retain its ability to carry out massive attacks in urban centres. The target of this attack was clearly the low-ranking government officials who regularly travel on the bus into the KP capital.

The explosion demonstrates what a complex task defeating militancy is. The army high command has claimed huge successes in remote areas of the country. But this does not change the fact that the capacity for violence is still intact in our key cities. Peshawar and its people were horrified by the recent blast and there have been numerous complaints of insensitivity by the rest of the country to the incident. As has happened before, inadequate rescue facilities possibly contributed to the high death toll. But the reality also is that as long as the terrorists are able to strike at will no citizen can consider him or herself to be truly safe. We have failed to create a secure environment. The possibility of doing so in the future will come only if we accept the failures, consider why they have occurred and take steps to manage the measures against extremism more effectively. To do so would require better use of intelligence information and greater coordination between the various security agencies operating in the country. The same lapses have been pointed out before. We should not need to point them out again. Instead, the security environment in all our cities must improve in order to allow citizens to live normal lives.