Carnage in Mardan

As the year draws to a close, terror visited the country again when a suicide attack outside the Dohsera Chowk NADRA office in Mardan on December 29 left at least 26 people dead and more than 50 injured. A splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamatul Ahrar, has claimed responsibility for the atrocity. The death toll could have been much higher had a brave security guard not prevented the suicide bomber from entering the NADRA office. This is a clear message that while the government and the military have been able to bring down the number of terrorist attacks during the past year quite significantly, terror groups retain their ability to strike and cause mayhem, even if this ability has been reduced to an extent. The carnage in Mardan follows on the heels of other terrorist incidents that have occurred in just the last few weeks — some of which were sectarian in nature, some not. While the security landscape has improved and while according to the new digital database launched to track terror incidents, such attacks are down to 2008 levels, the evil of terrorism is far from being eliminated completely. At the end of a relatively more peaceful year, this is a reminder that our security agencies still have an arduous task lying ahead.

In order to hunt down all terrorist factions, and prevent more front-page stories with distressed, heartrending faces of surviving relatives, the security agencies and the intelligence apparatus need to be ever more prepared. In this instance, the terror group has stated that it targeted the NADRA office as it considers this government department an important national institution. At the very least this indicates that for such government offices that serve scores of citizens every day, adequate security measures are a must. Terrorists have the tendency to lie low before intermittently striking at any spot where they find an opening, big or small, and this adaptability and durability needs to be addressed. People have reason to fear more attacks such as the Mardan carnage and this is where we need to go one step further and establish foolproof security measures across the board, as well as developing a strategy that addresses the amorphous nature of terrorism.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 31^st, 2015.

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