The apparent ease with which crime can be perpetrated in our neck of the woods is by no means a secret, owing largely to mal-governance and shoddy administration. However, the government has gone out of its way to reach the epitome of incompetence this election year. Imagine one keeps dangerous prisoners — the backbone of all real intelligence operations against the terrorist enemy — close to their area of influence. Now imagine one allows such ‘prisoners of war’ full access to means of communication. Compound this incomprehensible fantasy by letting it end at its logical conclusion, i.e. their unchallenged rescue from prison and you get the full measure of utter foolishness involved in our administrative decision making. The reference of course is to the recent Bannu jailbreak. A rational approach post-debacle would have been an immediate onsite investigation followed by equally urgent criminal negligence legal proceedings against all involved in the affair. However, since this is Pakistan, rationality fails to make an entrance as exhibited by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government’s decision to form yet another committee to solve the obvious. Another interesting line of inquiry involves the reasons why the incident was allowed to occur given prior intimation by the country’s intelligence agencies. How 200 or so armed assailants can just waltz into an assumedly secure detention facility and walk out with almost 400 convicts belies any claim of effective chain of command or compliance with the requirements of keeping known and dangerous terrorists under tight security. What can be expected in the coming days is the usual circus of government ineptness and political mudslinging. More talk shows where the subject runs around in circles following its own tail; more official scapegoats led to the slaughter, but little interest in or addressal of fundamental reality and weaknesses. The truth is that the state and its organs, at present, are simply not geared towards dealing with an enemy as ruthless, determined and resourceful as the Taliban have proved to be. A thorough self-criticism of our ways and means of addressing the challenge of terrorism can and must be the starting point of a thorough overhaul of our regime of intelligence, security and law enforcement, including secure detention of terrorists. The formation of an effective, empowered, overarching anti-terrorism agency at the national level could be the answer to the conundrum of the federal and provincial authorities’ left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The enemy is ruthless, determined, organized. Unless the state is able to match and then overtake these terrorist advantages, the battle will remain unequal and reactive on the side of the authorities, with the initiative remaining in the terrorists’ hands. *