Sectarian terrorism

According to latest reports, police investigation into the recent suicide bombings in Islamabad, Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan, which left 23 people dead and several others injured, has found leads linking these acts of terrorism to the Taliban.
It is not surprising given that a Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operating from both South and North Waziristan, had threatened to avenge a recent military attack in the area, vowing to cause immense pain to "them". The investigations are yet to be concluded, but reports quoting security officials say the six men arrested in Dera Ismail Khan last Sunday had provided important information about the network of militants from Waziristan who had been planning suicide bombings across the country.
In fact, security agencies already had information about impending bombings and hence had been on high alert and that was why several of those killed and injured in the Peshawar suicide bombing were policemen, and the dead included the city chief of police. Thanks to the high state of alert in other parts of the country as well, especially Karachi with its tense sectarian situation, Ashura passed by without any terrorist incident.
It is no secret that the Taliban are the alumni of Maddrassahs in the NWFP, and their great teacher and leader Osama bin Laden, a staunch Wahabi, is alleged to hold a strong anti-Shia bias. Consequently, ever since their inception and rise in Afghanistan the Taliban have maintained an adversarial relationship with Iran. And al Qaeda is believed to be deeply embroiled in the bloody sectarian strife sweeping Iraq. Notably, during the Taliban rule some of the most wanted sectarian terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had taken refuge in Afghanistan.
The unfortunate reality is that sectarianism took root in its ugliest form under the rule of General Ziaul Haq, who encouraged obscurantist Sunni elements in order to strengthen his political position at home.
An ally of Saudi Arabia in the US-backed war in Afghanistan, he also sought to promote the interests of the Saudi government, which was keen to counter, through proxies, the post-Revolution Iran that had been openly calling for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy. Pakistani society thus became an unwitting participant in the outsiders' battles for influence. This was soon to coincide with Pakistan's policy of promoting Jehadist fervour in support of its own foreign policy objectives. In time the lethal mix of militancy, sectarianism and politics gave unprecedented power and confidence to various sectarian outfits and their leaders, who ran Maddrassahs with foreign money, poisoning the minds of their young students with sectarian hatreds and inciting them to indulge in mindless violence.
Successive governments made loud noises about quelling such violence but did little in practical terms. In some instances they even courted the support of sectarian leaders for narrow political gains. Given this background, it is not very difficult for the Taliban to find recruits whose minds are already filled with sectarian hatreds to go and blow themselves up so as to kill people who follow a different school of thought than their own. The problem, it goes without saying, cannot be addressed through policing alone. The mainstream religious parties, the government and civil society all have a role to play in addressing it.