Daily Times

Once again, Quetta became a victim of a vicious act of terrorism, dead bodies strewn on the ground under an open sky, drowned in their own blood. Depriving Balochistan of the highly educated brains, a fresh wave of terrorism has displayed the vulnerability of the country to terrorist attacks despite the success of the Operation Zarb-e-Aab, which has been carried out for two years in the tribal areas. The fight against terror has created more security concerns among people of Pakistan.

At least 75 people were killed, and more than 100 injured in a suicide bomb attack in the grounds of a government-run hospital in the city of Quetta on Monday August 8, 2016. The blast happened when a large crowd of lawyers and some journalists had gathered at the hospital following the killing of the Balochistan Bar Association President, Bilal Kasi, who was killed in a shooting earlier in the day. His body was brought to the hospital. Among the dead, most were lawyers.

A few hours after the attack took place, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar — a splinter group of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — which has pledged allegiance to the militant Islamic State group, has reportedly claimed responsibility for the blast. Earlier, the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar had attacked a recreational park in Lahore, and the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, killing 75 people, mostly children, and more than 20 people respectively. The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar — like other Taliban terrorist groups — is found hunting soft targets like parks, schools, polio centres and hospitals, with an intentions to leave deeper and more horrible imprints on the minds of the people and enfeeble the morale of the nation. It is targeting the vulnerable fractions of population: religious minorities, children and professionals.

The Quetta blast is a clear retort to the resolve Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed in the latest performance review of the National Action Plan (NAP), held on August 1. Sharif reiterated that Pakistan would be made secure for every single citizen of the country irrespective of ethnicity and religion. The attack encompasses the message that the menace of terrorism with all its ferocity still exists in
the country.

While passing a unanimous resolution in condemnation of the Quetta blast in the National Assembly on Tuesday, August 9, numerous parliamentarians said that blaming every such incident on foreign agencies has become a convenient scapegoat for government, and that an internal investigation within the security forces and intelligence agencies is required. NAP is a comprehensive strategy, and lack of seriousness of the government in its effective implementation to counter terrorism and religious extremism and taking reformative measures is a matter of concern not only for the people of Pakistan but also the concerned authorities.

Balochistan has been undergoing incidents of violence and targeted killings for over a decade. Separatist militants target government facilities and installations, while sectarian militant organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi kill the Shia and Hazara communities; such attacks are spreading sectarian poison in the province. But this Monday’s blast, the latest barbaric act of terrorism carried out by the Jaamat-ul-Ahrar targeting lawyers, who like doctors and teachers are seen as a part of intelligentsia, was a meticulously pre-planned attack on the legal community. Before the killing of advocate Bilal Kasi on the morning of Monday’s blast, other lawyers were targeted in the last few months in the province. On August 3, advocate Jahanzeb Alvi was shot dead by unknown armed men in Quetta, and the principal of the University of Balochistan’s law college, Barrister Amanullah Achakzai, was also shot dead by unknown assailants in June.

What are the specific motives and reasons — other than spreading panic — behind the calculated slaughtering of the legal community? The main aim of the bombing is yet a mystery, but the killings of lawyers — professionals who had been providing people of socio-economically backward province with advocacy services to get constitutional, political, social, economic and civil rights — have created a sense of hopelessness among those people. The civil courts, district session courts and the Balochistan High Court in Quetta seem deserted now. The attack has cast a shroud of despondency over people in the province having seen heart-rending killing of professionally educated class through violence. Now it will take many years for the new lawyers to fill the gap, which the killings of top echelon of lawyers have generated in the courts.

Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif, chairing a high-level security meeting, ordered the intelligence agencies to launch special combing operations after the blast happened at the Quetta Civil Hospital. However, there is not much hope that the operations will bear productive and long-lasting results. What is, in fact, needed is that government must review its counterterrorism strategy, and bring about a comprehensive and an all-embracing counterterrorism strategy. Moreover, the deadliest attack in the history of Pakistan against the lawyer community calls for security agencies to find out the causes of the pre-planned targeted attack on the community.

The writer is an academic, and can be reached on Twitter @ARShykh