After the latest terrorist attack on a chemists' protest demonstration at Lahore's busy Mall Road left 17 people dead and 84 others injured, some of them grievously, the President, Prime Minister, Interior Minister and Chief of the Army Staff issued customary condemnatory statements iterating resolve - that has lost meaning - to step up the fight against terrorism. Which merits the question why step up now? This is not the first time terrorists have hit Lahore or some other part of the country. The list is too long to cite here. And of course, the PM also directed those concerned to provide best medical facilities to the injured - as if they would not do their duty unless directed by him.
A particularly nonsensical statement came from Punjab government spokesman and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah. According to him, the incident could have been averted had the protesting chemists not gathered on the Mall in the wake of a security alert, providing a ready target to terrorists. Indeed, a security alert was on, warning the provincial authorities that about ten suicide bombers (three reportedly were arrested) had entered Lahore and could target the police, schools or some other public place. Such alarms usually are of not much help since they contain vague rather than precise information about a likely target. If only the National Counter-Terrorism Authority had been strengthened and, as planned, a Joint Intelligence Directorate established under it the quality of information would be much better.
The overarching problem is lack of will on the part of the ruling PML-N to do the needful. The 20-point political consensus based National Action Plan (NAP) was to go into action in January 2015. Two years on, much of it remains unimplemented. It called for ensuring proscribed organizations did not remerge under new names, and sectarian terrorists were to be dealt with firmly. But leaders of various banned organizations continue to be allowed to stay active by inventing new identities for their organizations. As for dealing firmly with sectarian terrorists, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan recently caused a furor in the Senate when he contended that banned sectarian organizations could not be equated with 'purely' terrorist groups. There should be separate laws, he said, for organisations that are proscribed on grounds of terrorist links and those banned on sectarian basis. In other words, banned sectarian outfits deserve to be treated gently even though they are banned because, like the 'purely' terrorist TTP groups, they too have been killing innocent people.
Sectarian outfits of a certain hue are also known to have a nexus with the TTP. In the present instance, a banned terrorist organisation, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a TTP splinter group, has said it is responsible for the attack. It may be recalled that last March, the Ahrar had claimed credit for killing more than 70 people at a Lahore park on the Easter Day, and later in August for the carnage at a Quetta hospital, killing some 100 people, most of them lawyers. This terror outfit, formed by the head-chopping Mohmand Agency terrorist, Omar Khalid Khorasani, has had close links with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) - the most fearsome violent sectarian organisation that rose from southern Punjab to spread its tentacles all over the country. LeJ has several splinter groups active everywhere in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan as part of the TTP. There are other TTP associated sectarian groups based in south Punjab, which is why one of the NAP points calls for zero tolerance for militancy in Punjab. Ahrar also supports the IS. All these various religious extremist organisations are connected at some level.
The NAP also called for registration and regulation of seminaries, a vast majority of whom, arguable are poisoning young minds with sectarian hatreds, and also providing foot soldiers for the TTP terrorists. Yet the minister has been trotting out all kinds of excuses to ignore madrassah reforms. Then there is the issue of choking financing for terrorists and terrorist organizations. So far, senior civil and military officials have been talking about cutting flow of funds to extremist organizations, but there is no evidence of any progress on this score.
So what is the way forward? Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa chaired a corps commanders meeting on Tuesday. The meeting decided to take strict action against all outfits that remain active after name change, and also to undertake combing operations in south Punjab. The latter decision is not something new. In fact, it has been a while since the army started countrywide intelligence-based operations alongside a combing exercise. That has helped, though to a limited extent. Eliminating terrorism root and branch calls for much more than that. The civilian authority needs to take the lead, and fully implement the NAP. The police's capability ought to be enhanced so they can undertake effective and no-holds-barred operations against all types of terrorists - sectarian outfits, militants with foreign agendas and those the Interior Minister describes as 'purely' terrorist organizations. That though can happen only if the political and military leaderships are prepared to do as they say.
Presiding over a high-level meeting in Lahore the same day the CoAS conferred with his top commanders, the Prime Minister pressed all the right buttons saying among other things "war against terrorism will be taken to its logical conclusion." And that the enemy would be defeated with national determination. If the past - especially his interior minister's stance - is any guide, the resolve to take the war to its logical end is likely to fizzle out as days turn into weeks and months, and some other horror occurs. Actions must speak louder than words.
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