The post-APS attack fury and sadness that kick-started the National Action Plan (NAP) seems to have lost steam
TORONTO: Oh December, why have you came back? The pain of last December has yet to fade away, but perhaps it shouldn’t fade, because when that pain fades, a shawl of national amnesia will wrap around our eyes.
We must not forget that the bloodthirsty hyenas are still out there. They have gone underground for a while to escape the blaze of Operation Zarb-e-Azb. Now, they have acclimatised to the new realities and have dug out new nefarious opportunities to inflict pain on the already wounded and excessively burned skin of the state of Pakistan. They have struck again, sending 22 people to their death in the Parachinar blast.
The post-APS attack fury and sadness that kick-started the National Action Plan (NAP) seems to have lost steam. The same political expediencies began to creep into a plan that otherwise was thought as a lifeline for the future course for Pakistan. The interior minister would give thunderous statements when he addressed the issue of NGOs and the presence of illegal Central Asian women in the country. Moral turpitude was a graver crime for him but the same minister would start holding back his criticism, and his voice would tremble when he needed to mention the names of the fanatics, killers and their supporters sitting right next to his ministry’s office in the heart of Islamabad as well as elsewhere in the country. Nations always pay a heavy price when people running the state are inept and cowardly. Ordinary people suffer the consequences of the state’s incompetence. This is not a state of affairs that one should be willing to endure because this is a matter of life and death.
When the security establishment recently complained about the lacklustre performance of political governments, federal and provincial, when it came to implementing the NAP, all hell broke loose. Instead of actually pondering over the concern of the establishment, a barrage of opinions was unleashed, focusing on ‘hidden motives’. The time has come to accept that the military has a role to play in defeating terrorists and that civilian governments also need to play their due role in this regard. There is no room for complacency and any misgivings in this regard.
The Parachinar blast is a stark reminder that the mess spread over the past 30 years of misplaced statecraft cannot be swept away so quickly. The event should not be brushed aside only because it happened in a far-flung area. These infernos spread very quickly. We have been reminded of this painful reality hundreds of times in the past decade. Please act now, quickly, before the bomb blasts start rocking every nook and corner of Pakistan again.
Bahadar Ali Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, December 17th, 2015.
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