Peshawar attack

Fact is a band of heavily armed militants was able to make their way into heavily secured facility, & inflict havoc.

The chaos that began at Peshawar airport on December 15, when several militants were killed during a Taliban attack, finally ended on December 16 as security forces tracked down five militants who had escaped the action at the airport and had taken refuge at a village near Peshawar. A total of 15 people are reported killed in the mayhem, which kept the airport closed for some 18 hours. Among the dead there are said to have been five Uzbeks, killed at the airport. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), through their spokesman, have claimed that the attack was really intended to target the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base in the vicinity of the airport. They have also stated that some damage was caused to equipment at the base, though the credibility of this is under doubt as a spokesman for the PAF has denied any impact at the base.

What cannot be denied, however, is the gravity of the attack. Some 15 persons — 10 militants, two policemen and three civilians — were killed at the end of it all. Peshawar has been left shaken and with good reason. The fact is that a band of heavily armed militants was able to make their way into a heavily secured facility — in one of the best protected zones in Peshawar — and inflict havoc. Clearly, the operation was meticulously planned and the militants certainly came perilously close to striking the PAF base — just as they have hit other military facilities before. This also suggests they are still a well-organised force with the power to carry out complex operations. The days of the TTP are far from over and we wonder what the highly-publicised operations staged against them have achieved — if anything at all. Questions also arise over how the Taliban are to be defeated. Certainly, there seems so far to have been little success.

The only ‘good’ news, if it can be termed that, to emerge from all this is the ISPR statement praising the help received from civilians in finding the militants who escaped from the airport. This goes to show how much our people are opposed to extremism. Now, if only they can be provided the help — by the state — needed to escape it.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2012.