It is against this background that the fight against terrorism is being fought, and as the prime minister was speaking in Quetta, the interior minister was speaking in Washington, DC and laying out a five-point strategy to counter the violent extremism that is the engine of terror. The last of the five items on the counter-extremism to-do list was to focus on education to promote tolerance, and there lies the key. Pakistan, over the last 30 years, has become a profoundly intolerant country, deeply polarised along sectarian fault lines. Much of the terrorism seen in 2015 is sectarian in origin, and most of the major attacks so far this year have been sectarian. Sectarian terrorist groups operate despite bans on them, and they attract widespread support financially via individual donations at home and from abroad, as well as through significant ‘street power.’ To ‘win at all costs’ Pakistan needs to activate the sectarian kill-switch, and that is years away.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2015.
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