Baba Farid blast

The assault on places holy to people across the country continues. The shrine of Baba Farid at Pakpattan, one of the most important Sufi centres in the country, has been the latest to suffer, with a bomb explosion soon after dawn prayers leaving at least 6 people dead and more than twice that number injured. The extremists, perhaps ‘copy cats’ who have taken their cue from attacks this country has been witnessing for over five years on smaller shrines in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, have been hitting the highest-profile centres: Data Darbar in Lahore, Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi and now Baba Farid. Collectively, over 50 people have died in these blasts, with the most deaths occurring in the Lahore attack. Shrines across Sindh remain closed and those seeking consolation, or an opportunity to pray at a place of peace, often do not dare to venture to even  those shrines that are still open.

It is time to ask a few basic questions: Is it truly conceivable that our intelligence agencies have no notion of who is behind these attacks? The outfits operating in various places are well known. Both privately and in their reports, some journalists most familiar with terrorism in the Punjab since the 1990s have been able to say which set-ups are most likely to have carried out the latest act of violence. We should be able to assume that the intelligence set-up would be able to do even better. But instead, from them and from the police, we see an apparent state of paralysis. We see also gross incompetence, with one of those identified as the ‘suicide bomber’ who hit Abdullah Shah Ghazi turning up safe, sound and totally intact at home.

In another situation, we could have laughed at this comedy of errors. In the circumstances we face today, laughter is obviously inappropriate. What we see is the unfolding of a terrible tragedy, the impact of which grows worse by the day. We need far better security at shrines but we cannot indefinitely guard every shrine, every mosque, every bazaar or every school on a long-term basis. Other solutions need to be found, and the foot-dragging we see, most notably in the Punjab, converted into a far quicker march against extremism.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2010.