Terrorism has no quick fixes, especially when the parties involved thrive more in its presence. Therefore, Islamabad would be better off reading the tea leaves before expecting much from its demarche, albeit a strongly worded one, to Kabul’s interim government in the wake of a disastrous attack on the Bannu cantonment. As in the past, the Afghan leadership would either ask for more time, shrug their hands off the entire issue or find some bizarre excuse to justify their hospitality to the TTP. The direness of the situation is well evident from a fresh attack on Friday when an inter-faction rivalry within the Pakistani Taliban led to a bomb blast in South Waziristan. More disturbingly, a wave of euphoria erupted on social media throughout this week as commanders of Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, which operates out of Afghanistan, kept congratulating each other over the addition of two more armed personnel and five civilians to an already exhaustive list of their conquests in Pakistan; carrying a grave message for the administration about the tenacity of our enemies. There’s no denying the courage and steadfastness of our armed forces, which continue to fight on the front line and give in everything they have to secure the country and their nation. The situation could have become far worse had the 10 terrorists not been effectively contained before they could inflict further damage. However, no state can afford to shift the weight of difficult decisions from one avenue to another and watch its soldiers and citizens falling like dominoes. How many more innocent lives must be sacrificed before we take decisive action against this scourge? Now that Operation Azm-e-Istehkam intends to launch a decisive crackdown against all sleeper cells and facilitators of these outfits, the onus is on Islamabad to consider a foolproof diplomatic solution to persuade Afghanistan to address the crucial issue more seriously. Running out of ways to ensure a collaboration against regional terrorism, especially when little assistance can be found from across seas, Pakistan is, indeed, trapped between a rock and a hard place. *