On hindsight, the forgotten Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2009 and the Swat Peace Accord, if read together, were the Magna Carta for peace in our time in the troubled northwest of the country. The Swat Peace Accord was a comprehensive and balanced document. The Nizam-e-Adl Regulation, on the other hand, catered to the long-standing demand in Swat that Shariah law be enforced through setting up a judicial structure of Qazi courts of different jurisdictions. The agreement and the resultant Sharia judicial system would have prepared the ground for similar accords in the more problematic region of FATA which comprises seven semi-autonomous tribal regions where Pakistani courts and police have no jurisdiction and the government writ very weak, at best. This was one of the extremely rare instances when the saner elements within the provincial and federal governments prevailed upon the ruling junta. But they were in very precarious minority in the two governments. The inner cordon of hard-liners within the junta, which had vested interests of their foreign masters to serve, prevailed in the end. Thus, the country reverted to the path of bloodshed before even the ink on the paper of the two agreements had dried up. As is the modus operandi of the powers that be, the 'invisible Taliban erupted out of nowhere within no time. I say there is not a single militant group in this region that has the power and capability to make the sort of well-planned attacks that took place except with the aid of the specific clusters of national and international intelligence agencies that are teeming the region of AfPak. These 'Taliban attacks, most fortuitously for the hard-liners, created the furore that helped them advance their agenda. We feel very upset if Pakistan is clubbed with Afghanistan, and rightly so. Pakistan was born due to the force of one of the most amazing democratic and constitutional movement. Despite the repeated mishaps of martial laws and semi-martial laws, the people of Pakistan have always fought and chosen to establish the democratic and constitutional principles their Founding Fathers had aspired for this country. We dont deserve these engineered bomb blasts that are being done only to provide legitimacy for perpetuation of the war against terrorism. -SHAMSA ALI, Lahore, November 7.