For most people, home is a refuge, a retreat. It is a secure place, divorced from the chaos that usually ensues outside its boundaries. Not here, not anymore. After market places, shrines and mosques, government offices and military establishments, terrorists have now invited themselves into living rooms. A suicide bomber shot his way into KPK Law Minister Israrullah Khan Gandapur’s residence in Dera Ismail Khan, which was cramped with guests on account of Eid celebrations. The explosion killed 12, including the PTI MPA, and injured 30 others.  Ansar al Mujahadeen, a terrorist group ‘allied with the TTP but not a part of it’, claimed responsibility for the attack.  It is safe to say that despite the fact that the TTP has distanced itself from the attack, it supports it in principle as it did in the All Saints church and Qisa Khwani bazaar blasts; a continuation of the glaringly obvious foot-in-the-door policy.
The attack may be unique in the sense that a minister was attacked and killed at his own residence in a suicide blast, but the overall response by the political leadership failed to deviate from the usual cries of conspiracy and meaningless condemnations. Not a single statement, by anyone in power, could possibly persuade even an optimist to believe that the dark present will give way to a brighter future any time soon. The fact that PTI lost its third MPA to the brutality of extremists since coming into power, has not deterred it from its misguided and extremely dangerous demand of ‘peace talks’. Instead, perhaps swayed by the Eid ul Azha spirit, it appears to consider the murders a sacrifice in the way of peace. PM Nawaz Sharif, Interior Minister Ch Nisar Ali Khan and PTI Chairman Imran Khan, quite possibly reading out from the same piece of paper, expressed their grief and demanded those responsible to be held accountable. Are people meant to take their statements seriously? Why should they when the perpetrators of the attacks during the last month alone still evade justice, and the murder of their 40,000 fellow countrymen has been reciprocated with a ‘peace offer’?
PTI leader, Shafqat Mehmood, intoned that people shouldn’t forget that PTI is the victim here. The PTI holds government in KPK, and governments do not get to play victim. They act. If anything, the party, just like the government it leads, is an unfortunate victim of its own bad judgment in pushing for talks with murderers. It is time for PTI to abandon its obsession with a joke of a policy – and to acknowledge that the decision reached by consensus at the APC is un-implementable and unwise and needs to be immediately revised.