The Quetta blast

This refers to the news report, ‘11 killed in Quetta bus blast’ (October 20). The blast shattered the relative calm of the city. The road – Saryab – is notorious for such deadly incidents like targeted killings, bomb blasts, etc. If law-enforcement agencies cannot secure this one artery of the capital city then one can imagine the law and order situation in the rest of the province where even basic infrastructure is missing.
We are harvesting the fruits of the decades-old Afghan war that has now morphed into a terrorism monster. Over the years we have witness a steady stream of narcotics trade, free flow of lethal weapons from across the border and a burgeoning black economy. Our drift towards anarchy was slow but in recent years it has gained a lot of energy from local as well as foreign sources. Operation Zarb-e-Azb is our last hope and we seem to have taken back some of the ground lost to terrorists. It is sad that the civilian leadership has yet to display the responsibility the people had expected of them at the time of the last elections. The best course is to call an all-party conference on the issue.
Waheed Haider
Turbat