The bomb blast ripping through the shrine of famous Sufi Saint Sakhi Sarwar in Dera Ghazi Khan on Sunday that took the lives of 50 people and injured 100 others should be condemned severely. This was followed by another attack in Lower Dir on Monday that resulted in the loss of eight lives. A Muslim with a thinking mind, whatever the provocation, would be the last person to carry out such acts that cause mayhem in society. Indeed, a decade ago no one would have imagined that such attacks would become a daily occurrence in Pakistan and that thousands of peaceful countrymen would fall prey to them. It is quite clear that these are times when hostile forces, including the US, India and Israel, sharing the common agenda of harming Pakistan, have unleashed their destructive fury on it through exploiting its sectarian divide. The Americans have already played this game of creating chaos and divide-and-rule among Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. The law and order situation is so bad that even Christians, who had lived with their Iraqi countrymen in peace for centuries, have thought it fit to flee from the country and over 10,000 are reported to have migrated to other lands. Muslim brothers are being pitted against one another and Pakistan is being turned into a hotspot of bomb blasts and sectarian disharmony. A serene and peaceful atmosphere used to prevail at shrines; and there was no question of any disturbance. Muslims have their differences but these divisions were never pronounced enough to fuel violence on the scale witnessed in present times. Attacks on shrines, therefore, seem to be the work of foreign agents and spy networks, which have penetrated deeply into local militant outfits and are using them as cannon fodder. The pity is that the leadership at the helm while reacting to the carnage in D. G. Khan rather than coming up with any planning to rid the country of sectarianism and terrorism, are indulging in usual rhetoric for media consumption. It is a crying shame that one sector education wherein lies the salvation of the nation from the menace of sectarian violence is being callously ignored by the government as shown by the fate to which the HEC has been consigned. We need education at all levels to fight militancy, terrorism and sectarian hatred that have turned the country into a war zone. The government as well as the people of the various sects should realise that it is the enemy that is creating mistrust and hatred among them. Their religion Islam preaches peace and tolerance.