Daily Times

The assassination of a religious scholar in Karachi last week reeks of yet another attempt on the part of the enemy to sow hatred among different outfits in the country. Pakistan is no stranger to such tactics, of course, as we spent the good part of the last three decades dancing to just such tunes, even at the cost of utter mayhem in people’s daily lives. Fortunately with time we were able to learn that when we killed and harassed people of different denominations and religious persuasions the only one really left happy was the enemy that hated all of us alike. One hoped, after all that went so wrong for so long, that such episodes would never be repeated in the long narrative of Pakistan.

Yet here we are. The prime minister seemed convinced, based on a lot of evidence that crosses his desk no doubt, that the enemy is trying one of its oldest tricks one more time. Now that it has failed to isolate Pakistan diplomatically, instead practically all of India’s neighbours are pretty cross with it at the moment, it’s going back to trying to get Pakistan to implode and fall on itself. Yet the country’s religious community seems well aware of precisely what is happening and their joint stance of condemning the murder but at the same time calling for calm needs to be appreciated. They might just have put out a fire that could have burnt the house down.

What seems to differentiate the new Pakistan from the old one is that people are no longer led astray so easily. For if such a thing had happened in the old days authorities would already have been struggling to control so-called revenge attacks, not to mention unrest on the streets. The whole country, especially the security agencies, made great sacrifices so that Pakistan could win its own little war against terrorism. But now that peace is just around the corner in Afghanistan, this region stands on the verge of being conflict free after a very long time. All countries in the region should go the extra mile to protect the peace that is so painstakingly being achieved. It’s a pity that there are still players that are bent upon sabotaging all that has been won. The prime minister must take the evidence he has and present it to all regional stakeholders. Everybody that has put in something to rid South Asia of terrorism needs to stand with Pakistan and put an end to this nonsense once and for all. *