Bloodbath in mosques

What an irony that in a country created in the name of Islam, Pakistan, mosques remain prime targets of terrorist attacks. Come Friday and fear grips the faithful, and this Friday was no different from many past Fridays. Among the two attacks on mosques in areas not far from Peshawar, the capital of embattled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 74 were killed and about 130 injured some quite critically.
The one at a newly-built mosque near Darra Adam Khel, the famous gun-manufacturing town, took some 69 lives. The damage to the mosque structure was extensive, as some houses in the neighbourhood also suffered damage. A teen suicide bomber is believed to have exploded himself amidst some two hundred 'namazis' as they congregated for Juma prayers. The other attack was on a mosque in the village of Budber, a place which once hosted an airstrip from which flew the U-2 on an espionage mission and was shot down by the Soviets, earning Pakistan sharp annoyance of Nikita Khrushchev who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. An explosive device is said to have been thrown into the mosque compound as 'namazis', were offering 'Isha' prayers. Darra has the tragic distinction of being hit twice; earlier, in March 2008, a tribal jirga was suicide-bombed in which 40 tribal elders lost their lives.
That the terrorists feel uninhibited at all in attacking mosques and funeral gatherings is a measure of the brutalization that tends to overwhelm all sensitivities - about religion, culture or humanity. We have just gone through a spell of devastating attacks on shrines in Karachi, Pakpattan and Lahore. And of course bazaars, schools, and government facilities remain terrorists' pet targets. As if they are not anything but heartless zombies and robots wired to kill, not really bothering whom to kill. It is not known whether this is the payoff of religious frenzy, tribal feuds and enemy-engineered plots. Perhaps it's all this and much more that we need to find out. The truth is that we, both as a people and a government, have yet to comprehend the phenomenon of violence that rocks us so violently and so regularly.
We report a terror-related incident as a one-time event, with officials making conjectures as to who was the bomber, who must be behind him, reconstruct its facial profile, undertake a DNA test - and forget. Pity, only a very fraction of alleged terrorists and their godfathers have been brought before the courts, and their successful prosecution is even more fractional. It's very often a narrative of the fabled blind men who described elephant only as much as they touched. In the absence of a coherent strategy and a plan of action to be executed under one roof against the ubiquitous terrorism there is not much to inspire hope of fighting out this demon which every second day appears at our doors.
As to who had inspired the attack on the Darra Adam Khel mosque some media reports say it could be the work of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), arguing that there was a long running feud between the local tribesmen and the Taliban and had caused many deaths on both sides, including the attack on jirga in 2008. However, of late, peace had been restored thanks to a peace deal. But the TTP has rejected this possibility, its spokesman Azam Tariq insisting that the Blackwater is involved - in line with a minority perception that if the Taliban spare mosques in Afghanistan why should they target in Pakistan.
But, probably, more cogent reason appears to be the determination made by area's senior most official Khalid Khan Umarzai, the commissioner of Kohat, that the mosque attack in Darra Adam Khel was the Taliban's retaliatory action in response to military operation. In fact, over the time the action against Taliban has acquired a pronounced tribal colour, reviving old tribal feuds and wars for turf. So, the 'enemy' is being targeted wherever opportunity permits irrespective of the sanctity of the place or regard for the life of the innocent victims - a hardness of feelings probably encouraged by the drone attacks.
Now that President Obama has preferred India over Pakistan in his Asian visit, Islamabad too needs to review its position and policy with regard to war against terror. And this is all the more necessary before we come under added pressure to launch military expedition in North Waziristan. Although, some of the strife-ridden tribal region has been 'cleared' of militancy, the fact remains that incidents of terrorist attacks on security forces keep happening, even in Swat Valley. The one more plausible reason for this is the failure of the civilian authorities to take over from the military in the areas subdued by the forces. The military can do only as much.
At the same time the federal government should steal some time from its preoccupations with power-accumulation and court-defiance actions and revisit the issue of war and peace in the tribal areas. The military should be used as law-enforcement agency that should not be policy of an elected government. It should talk to the people, both friends and foes, in the troubled region employing all possible channels. Instead of deepening the wounds - festering wounds trigger revenge - an all-out effort should be made to heal them without any further loss of time.