Charsadda: A wake-up call

The tragedy that happened in Charsadda on May 13 was regrettably, inevitable, in that militant outfits in Pakistan were likely to avenge Osama bin Laden’s death. While a senior official has said that suicide bombing on a paramilitary training centre may have been in response to an operation in Mohmand Agency, it has also been claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban, whose spokesman warned of more such attacks. Given that it was inevitable that the militants would strike back, and that, too, at a state installation, the first question that needs to be answered is why this academy was not given sufficient protection. Time and again, militants have been able to successfully attack targets that should have been impenetrable. The chances of Osama bin Laden’s followers lashing out after his death were all about certain; yet there seems to have been no plan to foil them.

The attack should also serve as a wake-up call to our bickering politicians. While they have been loudly complaining about the violation of our sovereignty by the US, a mix of foreign and local militants have already made a mockery of our sovereignty. It is curious that political parties get so worked up when the US kills the very terrorists we should be fighting but underplays how foreign militants have a free hand in Pakistan. We need to now work with the US to fight those who carried out this and dozens of other similar attacks in the country, rather than straining relations at a time we can least afford it.

The army, too, needs to be less myopic. It has refused to take any responsibility for Osama’s presence in Pakistan. As Nawaz Sharif has demanded, it is vital that an independent enquiry be held into Osama’s presence in Abbottabad. If the army leadership was interested in looking beyond its own interests, it would realise that this is in the interests of the military as a whole. It is the army that was attacked in Charsadda and which has been attacked countless times before. And if the army doesn’t get serious about tackling militancy it will be attacked again.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2011.