Daily Times

It is instructive that just as Kabul was falling to the Taliban, there was yet another terrorist incident – the fourth or fifth in just as many weeks, this time in Karachi – which took the lives of 13 people of an extended family. The facts that a Russian-made explosive device was allegedly used in the attack, which is what small-time insurgents typically use, and that the family was of Pashtun origin, have led to police to treat is as one of terrorism so far. Karachi, a true melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, is like a mini-Pakistan and whenever there is any sort of political, cultural, sectarian tension that can affect Pakistan and Pakistanis, it is bound to fester below the surface in Karachi before its pills out more openly in other places.

Whether or not something like that happened remains to be seen, and the police investigation will shed some light on some concerns in due course, but it can no longer be doubted that security concerns stemming from the collapse of the central government in Afghanistan have already begun having a very pronounced impact inside Pakistan. No doubt our law enforcement agencies were prepared for something just like this because they expected the largely defunct Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with its fighters and commanders stuck on the Afghan side of the border, to go active as soon as there was a political vacuum in that country.

This time, though, the enemy will not be allowed to spread panic, destruction and death like it did the last time and killed upwards of 70,000 people in Pakistan. We have already paid a very heavy price as a nation simply because we were in the crosshairs of other countries as they tumbled head-first into an unwinnable war. Now everybody is reeling from that fruitless war and the script is playing out more or less exactly as Pakistan told the whole world that it would. Yet a part of that script, unfortunately, also mentioned renewed violence in Pakistan. Therefore, once again the defenders of his soil are called upon to keep us all safe because only when we can keep the violence away from us can we really influence the whole region for the better. *