Linking Quetta carnage to PTI protest a cruel joke

ISLAMABAD: Some fertile minds have smelled a rat at the brutal Quetta bombing, raising a loaded question as to why this terrorist incident happened when the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) just launched its “movement for accountability”.

Not only a prominent PTI member of the National Assembly, who frequently represents his party in TV talk shows, but some “imaginative” TV anchors have also tossed up the same question on social media or in their current affairs programmes, as if they have the conviction that the terrorist strike was timed to sabotage the fresh anti-government campaign.

PTI legislator Ali Muhammad Khan posted a tweet to the effect at 11:16 am on August 8, a couple of hours after Quetta was rocked once again: Why is it so that whenever we in PTI Launch a major PRO PAK movement against #Rigging or #Corruption either #APS happens or #QUETTA Blasts.

He thus viewed the umatched attack on the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar on December 16, 2014 in the same manner. At the time, the lingering PTI’s sit-in in the D-Chowk of Islamabad was in progress. This post earned 269 re-tweets and 403 likes.

Eight minutes before this post the same day, Ali Muhammad Khan tweeted at 11:08 am, arguing for extension in service of Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif and said it was not extra-constitutional: “Considering the Challenges Ahead to Pak security I strongly think that COAS Gen Raheel.Sh should continue. Extension is not Extra Const.” This post got 70 re-tweets and 190 likes.

However, his PTI is yet to take a public stand on the grant of extension or retirement on due date of the army chief as no comment of Imran Khan is available in this connection. A tweet in Urdu by a TV anchor on similar lines said: People started coming out on streets against corruption, for accountability and blasts started? On whose behest TTP, RAW and terrorist organizations sponsor such acts and why? This attracted 557 re-tweets and 784 likes.

Another anchor raised strong suspicions as to why the Quetta carnage took place when, in his view, the anti-government campaign hugely intensified. However, ground realities belie the assertions of the PTI lawmaker and others. When the APS tragedy struck, the PTI’s sit-in had run out of steam and Imran Khan was desperately in search of face-saving exit. The crowd participation had tremendously dwindled especially at the D-Chowk and elsewhere because of the sweeping fatigue in his supporters, who were disenchanted with the futility of the protracted agitation.

The PTI had to bring to an end its sit-in due to the APS bloodbath as everyone resolved to take on the terrorists with one voice and in a decisive manner. In fact, this episode provided a good opportunity to the PTI to finish its protest. Had it continued the sit-in, it would have suffered more because the protest had virtually come to an end owing to little or no public interest anymore.

Nearly a month before the APS catastrophe, Allama Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) had wrapped up his sit-in at the same place on October 22, 2014, which served as a massive jolt to the PTI’s protest. He had wound up his sit-in after total exhaustion, financially and physically, and after not seeing even a ray of hope that any powerful quarter would come to his rescue. He had to virtually run away from the venue.

This was the situation of the two protests when the APS massacre happened, dazing Pakistan unprecedentedly. The responsibility for it was publicly claimed by the terrorists, who had their own agenda to accomplish.

The Quetta bloodshed took place a day after Imran Khan kick-started his movement for accountability from Peshawar. Everyone agrees that it was a lacklustre affair in terms of people’s participation in his march and rally. It did not make the Nawaz Sharif government pass sleepless nights as it turned out to be a low key affair compared to the early days of 2014 protest.

Nobody disagrees that terrorists have their own designs to achieve and their own timings to strike regardless of the prevailing political situation or any ongoing protest, and whether their strikes will serve the interests of the government or damage the strategy of some political party. Suspecting that they hit to nail the previous sit-ins or have now struck to harm the present accountability movement is a cruel joke. Indeed, like the APS slaughter, the Quetta massacre has equally shaken the nation. Raising unsubstantiated suspicions and doubts on such spine-tingling incidents is nothing but to belittle those who embraced martyrdom and to digress the attention from the actual menace of devastating terrorism.

It is appalling that these conspiratorial minds touted that a conspiracy was hatched, involving terrorists, to kill hundreds of innocent people just to frustrate the PTI campaign, which even otherwise was not threatening, and its political rivals are in a position to tackle it politically.