Call to fight militants, not appease them

An important lesson of the Dec 16, 2014 massacre of nearly 150 students and staff of the Army Public School, Peshawar is to look inwardly and shed any doubt that the militants must be fought to the end and not appeased, Senator Farhatullah Babar said on Saturday.

While addressing the civil society demonstration to commemorate the APS martyrs, the president of the human rights cell of the PPPP said: “Dec 16 is a dark day in the history of the country as innocent students were martyred in a school in a highly secured zone of the city and earlier in 1971, Pakistan broke into two after a humiliating surrender in Dacca. Introspection and an admission of mistakes on such a day is no shame.”

The APS tragedy and the recent resurgence of terror in the country was a reminder that the state’s security and foreign policies had failed as the non-state actors were active once again and were on a rampage with impunity, Babar said.

Those who sought to placate the militants and negotiate peace with them last year had done incalculable damage to the nation and must be held accountable.

“Soon after the APS tragedy, all political parties and institutions devised a National Action Plan to fight the terrorists but it has not been implemented.”