For the sake of an inquiry

We are unwilling to take tough measures required to improve our security systems & protect ourselves more effectively.

The Civil Aviation Authority inquiry into the Karachi Airport attack earlier this month seems to have run the same way as previous investigations of this nature. In other words, it has come up with nothing significant at all, with the several page report attaching no real blame on any authority for the raid on the airport by at least ten terrorists who were among the 30 killed in the incident. Perhaps, as a way to show something is being done, three persons have been suspended, including the manager of the airport and two other officials including one linked to the fire department. It does not take much intelligence to see that this is purely cosmetic action. These persons would really have nothing to do with insuring security or determining how the operation to regain control of the airport was staged.

There has been little comment on the seven airport workers who died in the coal storage facility of the building after a massive fire broke out. Their relatives claim efforts to rescue them were delayed for far too long. These are lives that could have been saved. But nothing in the investigation report states how this terrible act of neglect could occur or who should have been behind action to save the men who died so terrible a death.

On a wider note, the toothless inquiry report and the actions which follow it show all that is wrong with our country. It seems almost surreal that after an attack of this nature, so little should happen. The most powerless individuals have been made scapegoats and blamed for something that they are really not accountable for. True responsibility lies much further up the hierarchal order and, as has been the case so many times before, we have done nothing to touch the people placed at the top of this hierarchy. This of course means we remain at risk of further attacks because we are unwilling to take the tough measures that would be required to improve our security systems and protect ourselves more effectively against the terrible terrorist threat that we face.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2014.

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