Attack on the PMA
Instead of allowing militants to strengthen by giving them a breather, the military needs to ensure their elimination.
If there is one thing the military should have learned from the embarrassment of having Osama bin Laden hiding in plain sight — just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) — it is that they should at least, have some knowledge around areas with a military presence. That lesson has obviously eluded the military. In a daring predawn rocket attack, targeted at the PMA on January 27, militants were able to fire nine rockets at it before escaping. One person has been arrested but the authorities, obviously, seem to have little clue of the identity of the attackers. Instead, they are reduced to theorising and speculating that it may have been a revenge attack by al Qaeda, as one of its leaders, Aslam Awan who is originally from Abbottabad, was recently killed in a drone attack.
What is truly alarming is how militants seem to be easily able to attack military assets at will. Last year, it was the raid on PNS Mehran in Karachi, where authorities still do not know how the militants were able to enter and occupy the naval base for such a long time. Before that, even GHQ has been successfully attacked, as has a police academy near Lahore. The fact is that whatever the military’s definition of foolproof security, it is clearly not enough. In fact the kind of security they have is somewhat uselesss.
This attack also serves as a reminder that the militants are at war with the state of Pakistan. This is a war they have declared and waged but we need to be ready to fight back at all times. Negotiations, as we have seen before, are not a solution. They simply allow militants to regroup and then strike back more violently than before. Over the last few months, there has been a decline in militant attacks in the country. We should hope that this is because the militants have been weakened. And instead of allowing them to strengthen by giving them a breather, the military needs to ensure that they eliminate these militant groups altogether.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 30th, 2012.
What is truly alarming is how militants seem to be easily able to attack military assets at will. Last year, it was the raid on PNS Mehran in Karachi, where authorities still do not know how the militants were able to enter and occupy the naval base for such a long time. Before that, even GHQ has been successfully attacked, as has a police academy near Lahore. The fact is that whatever the military’s definition of foolproof security, it is clearly not enough. In fact the kind of security they have is somewhat uselesss.
This attack also serves as a reminder that the militants are at war with the state of Pakistan. This is a war they have declared and waged but we need to be ready to fight back at all times. Negotiations, as we have seen before, are not a solution. They simply allow militants to regroup and then strike back more violently than before. Over the last few months, there has been a decline in militant attacks in the country. We should hope that this is because the militants have been weakened. And instead of allowing them to strengthen by giving them a breather, the military needs to ensure that they eliminate these militant groups altogether.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 30th, 2012.