“Fair is foul and the foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air”. This dialogue from the legendary Shakespeare’s equally legendary play Macbeth defines exactly what Pakistan is going through these days. The once moderately religious, who were indoctrinated with radicalism to be the strategic depth and “Soldiers of God” or “Mujahedeen” turned against the very country that helped create them.
Groups like ISIS are now emerging in Pakistan claiming their share in today’s vast arena of modern terrorism, while our intelligence agencies and their allies, such as the United States who were earlier quite insistent on military operation(s) against these terrorists, seem to have lost interest.
How come the terrorists are subjugating different pillars of the nation right under the nose of our security services? Why are they unable to strike a major dent into the spine of these evil organizations, organizations which were created by and for Pakistan and Afghanistan as “strategic depth” only a few decades back?
Everyone thinks that our law enforcers especially the intelligence agencies are somehow responsible for what the country is reaping today. It was a bad decision on part of our military leadership to use these religious fanatics as assets and set them free to become the Frankenstein monster they have become today. Perhaps that’s exactly what some geniuses in our establishment wanted to achieve.
Whatever the plan was; these terrorists, having no real threat to their existence, seem poised to take the whole nation especially the civilian institutions hostage.
To me it is ironic that the media and the so-called experts are busy talking about the security lapses inside the hospital or failure of the local police to secure the gathering of lawyers before the blast in Quetta.
The people who raise such questions are either scared or stupid, because every person with even a little knowledge about the capabilities of these terrorist groups would simply know that these terrorists are far beyond the reach of civil administrations.
Just like a soldier deserves a soldier, a hound deserves a hound; these terrorists should also be given their equalizers in the battlefield in order to give them a serious blow.
So first things first, we have to start by at least asking the right questions and calling upon the right kind of forces to come and tackle these militant outfits.
Yes, having bogus metal detectors and scanners installed in different places is a great lapse but that’s not the reason these terrorists were able to massacre those innocent lawyers. It’s possible that the metal detector might have even impeded the entrance giving the suicide bomber an opportunity to claim more lives in one strike.
But introducing metal detectors and scanners is not how modern security services deal with the phenomenon of terrorism and suicide bombings. They take 3 measures, such as counter intelligence, and active operations against the terrorists. Look at the example of British intelligence agencies.
They proactively struck extremist networks after the 7/7 bombings and managed to reduce the terrorism significantly. It’s not that nobody tried to commit terrorism in the UK after the bombings. The British police arrested dozens of terrorists in midst of their vile terror plans since the incident.
Same goes with the French, Belgian or German security services. For example, Germans have started thoroughly scanning extremists among the immigrants and have arrested many from different places after a knife attack in a Würzburg train and a suicide attack in Arnsbach.
The politicians in the parliament are also taken abroad, unlike their Pakistani counterparts, to discuss and implement new laws to help their security services curb extremism.
But this kind of activism is scarce among Pakistani security services despite being present in one of the biggest terrorist hot spots in the world. Our security agencies, having been active in one of the birthplaces of modern terrorism, should be lecturing their counterparts across the globe. But this cannot happen because our citizens are still an indiscriminate victim of almost an unchallenged coercion campaign by these home grown terrorists, who are also backed by our enemy agencies.
Yes one can clearly see the enemies of Pakistan actively damaging us over past rivalries but the question is, how can we and our armed forces handle this chaos and who do we use as scapegoats this time.
Yes, it could be RAW behind such incidents, but then where is the liaison between Intel and the civil government and why are our diplomatic corps not active on a global scale?
Ironically we have one of the best intelligent agencies in the world, which are also not as accountable to Public Institutions as others like CIA, MI6, Mossad or BND, yet terrorists seem at large in our country.
Intel practices such as wiretapping, trolling, abducting or torturing people, which would unleash massive protests in some countries, is sporadic in Pakistan where we still await news about the thousands of our missing citizens. Despite this freedom, our intelligence agencies still have not managed to tackle terrorism in our country.