Targeting shrines

The fact now is that we have stability in no corner of our country. Karachi and Balochistan have multiple problems.

The terrible pattern of death we have seen time and again over the past few years, continues. Our shrines, the Sufi saints buried inside them and the peaceful way of life they preached, have emerged as a prime target for attack. This time the shrine of 13th Century Saint Ahmed Sultan, widely known as Sakhi Sarwar, was struck, about 40 kilometres outside the city of Dera Ghazi Khan. As in other cases, the two young bombers who detonated themselves within minutes of each other, and the men behind them who plan such attacks, ensured they would claim the maximum possible number of lives by striking during the annual ‘urs’ of the saint. Around 44 devotees died, over 120 are injured and terror has replaced the mix of tranquility and festivity that marks such occasions. A third bomber, aged we are told a mere 15 or 16 years, has been arrested. Like those whose funeral prayers are being read, the bombers, too, are victims of ruthless men who have made death their trade. 

This latest attack, too, comes in Punjab. The fact now is that we have stability in no corner of our country. Karachi and Balochistan have their sets of multiple problems; terrorism grows rapidly in Punjab and persists in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. There are reports that the Punjab government had received intelligence reports of a planned attack on a shrine. If this is true, we can only wonder, as we have before, why action was not taken or why, given the extensive intelligence that seems to come in, no authority acts against the outfits behind the killings. They remain shadowy entities whose structures are unclear. This is especially true in Punjab. Capturing the bombers themselves serves only a limited purpose. The real need is to identify the groups involved in these deadly acts of bombing, deploy intelligence assets so that they can penetrate their cadres and leadership structures and help the state in destroying them. This is the way counter terrorism is conducted in countries where such measures have had some degree of measureable success. Regrettably, and this is no secret, the violence and mayhem that we see today is the fallout of our own disastrous policies and ill-advised support of non-state actors, thinking they will help us in our efforts to outsmart our neighbours.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th,  2011.