Deadly attack in Dir

Accepting defeat in Dir is as good as accepting defeat in the entire war against militancy.

It has been apparent, for some time now, that Dir has become the most important front in the fight against militancy. This was only underscored by a suicide bombing in the Samar Bagh area of Lower Dir that killed 27 people and injured 67 others. This attack which follows many others in Dir, like the attack on a check-post in June, shows the hollowness of government claims that the area had been cleared of militants. A year-long operation in 2009 was supposed to have been a resounding success but the speed with which the militants have regrouped is quite unnerving. So brazen have the militants in Dir become that they even used a drugged girl to try and carry out a suicide attack at a check-post.

Losing Dir to the militants means putting the entire tribal area at risk of a militant takeover. Dir is a strategically vital area that borders Swat, Bajaur Agency, Chitral and Afghanistan. Accepting defeat here is as good as accepting defeat in the entire war against militancy. It is hard to say exactly which group to target and hold responsible for the suicide attacks in Dir, since there are so many militant outfits operating in the area. These include the local chapters of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi and, most dangerously, the Maulana Fazlullah-led Swat Taliban, that are staging attacks in Dir from its hideout of Nuristan in Afghanistan.

The one question that the military and law-enforcement authorities have to answer is how they were able to lose control of Dir so soon after they had supposedly cleared it of militants. The lesson that should have been learned from the Dir operation is that it is not enough to send the militants scurrying from an area, because one if the military withdraws they will return stronger than ever. The military has adopted a piecemeal strategy to taking on the militants, trying to clear them out of one area before moving on to the next. This has been a failure and needs to be replaced with a strategy that encompasses all of the tribal areas. There is no point in ridding one area of militants if they can easily find safe havens in other areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th,  2011.