As horrific as the latest suicide bombing in a Peshawar Imambargah was that killed 12 people, many of them women and children, and injured at least 20 others, it hardly surprised anyone. What it generated was an unmitigated sense of anger and helplessness.
It was on the same seventh day of Muharram a year ago when a suicide bomber had struck a Muharram procession in Peshawar, killing 15 people, including the chief of the Peshawar police.
This time, though, it happened after the police contingents accompanying the procession had gone back to their respective offices, satisfied at the peaceful conclusion of the procession at the Imambargah in a densely populated area. However, security was still present at the entrance when a teen-aged bomber entered the Imambargah.
He was actually spotted by security men, who did try to alert the gathering, but the bomber acted too quickly for all of them. According to some reports, he even fired a few shots to escape his pursuers and ran into the crowd, raising his arms to set off a suicide belt containing 10kg of explosives and three kg ball bearings to kill as many people as possible.
It is plain from these details that the incident could not be prevented despite a state of alert and appropriate security arrangements. In fact, not much can be done once suicide bombers set out on their course of madness. Stopping them on the way can be just as dangerous like in an instance in the Swat area a few months ago when the police chased a suspect, also a young boy in his early teens, on a tip-off.
He had boarded a passenger van, which the police stopped, but to the utter horror of on-lookers as, the boy on being found out, detonated his suicide belt killing a number of passengers as well as some members of the police party chasing him. In the rare event of arrest, such people have little to offer by way of useful information to the police to stop any future incident.
For, suicide bombers know nothing except the name - often an assumed one - of their handlers, though there is a whole chain of individuals involved: the mastermind, the recruiter, the one who procures explosive material, and another someone who has the technical expertise to put it together in a suicide belt.
The real problem starts in the sectarian nurseries where young people are indoctrinated in hate gospels to the point where they are willing to kill and get killed. It may be difficult but not impossible to identify and approach these people since they have discernible economic as well as spiritual linkages with organisations that are not located in secluded sanctuaries.
What is really needed is a will on the part of the government to do all it takes to get rid of the demon of sectarian hatred and the violence they spawn. Unfortunately, the track record of successive governments on this particular score has been one of compromises for the sake of their short-term interests.
Which has brought things to such a pass that the present sectarian bloodletting is believed to have acquired an al Qaeda connection, of which suicide bombing is a hallmark. Hopefully, the government will be able now to penetrate sectarian terror networks and prevent this madness from doing more harm than it has already done.