Karachi blast

Karachi’s brief tryst with peace, which took place during the dialogue, with the Taliban is over. Things, sadly, are back to normal — and normal in this context means bodies strewn across streets, the injured lying in hospital beds. An explosive device placed in a rickshaw in the Clifton area detonated soon after Friday prayers on April 25. The target is unclear. There are two Sunni mosques located in the area, but the blast took place as a bus carrying Shia worshippers from various Imambargahs drove by. Two passengers were injured, but the six killed and most of the 30 injured were mere bystanders, people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So, violence has returned to Karachi, and it has returned with a vengeance. A day before Friday’s blast, the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the death of Police Inspector Shafiq Tanoli, killed in a suicide attack. Essentially there has been no change in the pattern of killing or the forces behind it. Sectarian and militant forces continue to play the same ugly role we have seen for years. The hope in Karachi and indeed in other places around the country, that they may retreat given the talks the government has been holding with the TTP, and the recent operations that have been carried out in Karachi to rid it of criminal elements, will have faded after Friday’s incident. Certainly, there seems to be no intent to wind up the reign of death that has held sway in our country for far too long.

But for our survival, it is necessary that this ends. People cannot constantly live lives dominated by fear; we cannot have blood spattered across our streets so often. The question is: what is the solution? The attempts made over the past years to tame militancy have not worked. The many separate strands it has split into add to the complications. A different set of tactics is needed. But it is also true we don’t have time to waste, given that death continues to stand menacingly at our door with more lives continuing to be claimed by forces who have long cast aside humanity, turning our nation into a field of death and the mayhem that comes with it.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.