Army chief, PM discuss security amid fresh terror wave

Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday called on Prime Minister Imran Khan in Islamabad to discuss the “internal and external security situation” in the wake of a new string of terrorist attacks in the country, particularly a bomb blast at a madrassa in Peshawar.

According to a tweet by the Prime Minister’s Office, Gen Qamar and PM Imran also spoke about “professional matters” pertaining to the army.

On the recent efforts to “stoke violence in the country”, the prime minister expressed the resolve that the entire nation was “united against the cowardly acts of the enemy”.

The premier also paid tribute to personnel of the Pakistan Army, Frontier Corps and law enforcement agencies, who had “sacrificed their lives for the defence of the motherland".

The army chief’s meeting with the prime minister to discuss the security situation has come following a bomb attack at a seminary in Peshawar’s Dir Colony area on Tuesday that claimed the lives of eight students and injured over 125 others, bringing back the horrific memories of the 2014 massacre of 149 children and teachers at the Army Public School (APS) in the city.

There has been a resurgence of terrorist activities this month as just a couple of days ago a bomb blast at a market in Quetta claimed the lives of three people. On October 17, a Pakistan Army soldier embraced martyrdom in an attack on a patrolling team in Turbat. On the 15th of this month, 20 security personnel were martyred in two separate attacks on the Coastal Highway near Ormara and in North Waziristan.

A day earlier, Gen Qamar visited the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar where most of the people injured in Tuesday’s bombing at Jamia Zubairia are being treated and said the enemy behind both the 2014 APS attack and the madrassa bombing was the same

“It is the same enemy. Yesterday, the nation rejected this enemy and defeated their terrorist ideology. Today, we are united and will again fight it together,” he added. “We will not rest unless we bring all terrorists and their facilitators to justice.”

Gen Qamar further said terrorism had no religion. This obscurantist ideology seeks to spread terror and create an atmosphere of fear in society. “The madrassa attack, in fact, shows hostility towards Islam,” he added. “They [terrorists] target innocent civilians, madrassas, religious places, mosques, imambargahs, churches, temples, educational institutions and law enforcement agencies.”

The meeting between the country’s military and civilian leadership has also taken place at a time of growing political unrest in the country as an 11-party opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), is staging rallies in the major cities of the country seeking to send the PTI-led federal government packing.

The leaders of the alliance have been delivering fiery speeches at their power shows assailing the security establishment for “interfering in politics”.