Quetta attack

In less than a week’s time, terrorists targeted our soldiers in four separate incidents

Attacks on our security forces are now happening with greater frequency. In less than a week’s time, terrorists have targeted our soldiers in four separate incidents. On June 25, five FC soldiers were martyred in a terrorist attack in Sibi district of Balochistan. Two more attacks were reported by the ISPR on June 30 — one in Dwatoi area of North Waziristan and the other in Tiarza tehsil of South Waziristan. Five soldiers were martyred and as many others injured in the two attacks, one of which is said to have been launched from the Afghan province of Paktika.

The latest in this series of attacks on security forces came in the provincial capital of Balochistan this past Thursday. A bomb fitted on a motorcycle parked on Quetta’s Airport Road detonated just as a convoy of six Pakistan Army vehicles was passing by. Six people, including five security officials, were injured in the attack carried out in a manner similar to that in the car blast in Lahore’s Johar Town neighbourhood on June 23. Detonating explosives through time device or remote control is a sign of the involvement of the hostile intelligence agency of our eastern neighbour.

That is precisely why Balochistan’s Home Minister Mir Zia Langove had no two opinions about whose handiwork it could be. “India is using Afghanistan’s land to conduct attacks in [Pakistan],” he told reporters after the blast. That India has long been using the Afghan soil for sowing chaos in Pakistan through its proxies and its intelligence operatives is no secret. Pakistan has time and again raised the issue with the government in Kabul, but to no avail. And now an Afghanistan mired in civil war would suit our archrival even more.

Even though a border barrier to check the unwanted movement across the border is almost complete, cross-border attacks still continue. Besides, the IED explosions are indicative of the presence of terrorists’ sleeper cells in the province. All this stresses the need for bolstering the security mechanism.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 3^rd, 2021.

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