Avoidable tragedy

The tragedy that struck Quetta on August 8, effectively wiping out a whole generation of lawyers and leaving a huge vacuum, could so easily have been avoided. The three-member Supreme Court bench under Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali which has taken suo motu notice of the matter has demanded answers to the many questions about the bombing from the chief secretary of Balochistan and the IG police Quetta. So far, the court has been told there is no clue as to who carried out the ruthless attack, which came as lawyers collected at the Civil Hospital after the murder of advocate Anwar Bilal Kasi. We do not know who killed Kasi either. The SC has raised some pertinent points, and also said that bombings in the past including the one in Hazara Town in 2013 which killed 60 have remained unsolved. So have other crimes involving terrorist attacks. Justice Jamali cites terrible governance as the reason for this, and his verdict cannot really be disputed.

As was pointed out during the hearing, the police, the FC, the Levies and no less than seven separate intelligence agencies operate in Quetta. Yet they were unable to extract any clue as to who carried out the ruthless bombings or, better still, gather information which may have prevented them. The key task of law enforcers and intelligence is to prevent violence and secure the lives of citizens. The complete collapse of governance is one reason this does not happen. Law officers representing the federal government have also been called to appear before the bench. The breakdown of law is, after all, countrywide. It means no citizen is safe. An additional aspect is the lack of adequate staffing at the Civil Hospital. In many cases the worst wounded among the 92 injured had to be shifted to the CMH as staff was not present at the Civil Hospital and there were too few doctors and attendants to meet needs. The Quetta tragedy has simply exposed the fact that we live in a country where government does not function. The court has said this in clear-cut words. The challenge then is to find a way to stitch together the thin strips which still present the last remains of a ruling structure. We have allowed things to be ripped apart into far too many shreds. The graves of the lawyers and 20 or so others who fell with them are a reminder of this. The only way to honour them would be to improve the standard of governance we are able to offer our people.