Daily Times

It is do or die for us. How many times have we heard our leaders make claims that this is a sink or swim for us, that and we will do everything to end perpetrators of terror? Why do we then always end up taking the ‘die option’ and wait for a heartbreaking number of young innocent children and families to die and then take action? Why do we have to keep on thumping on empty rhetoric, express deep concern and wait for the next big explosion to happen? Why do we have to have let intelligence reports become facts to take some steps?

As the anguish pours in at all levels it makes one think of what is being done and what is not being done to let this horror become so enduring. At a national and personal level it has become a mystery, solved but un-dealt with. In the aftermath of this blast replying to many texts and emails asking for my family and my safety, I felt guilty. That I am writing that all is fine with me and my family, while doezens are dying in pain and uncertainty; that as long as the blast is away from us, and the victim-count is below the century mark it is still not as bad as the APS; that while we are trying to do whatever we can we are still not doing much. This feeling of inadequacy, this feeling of unrest and this feeling of déjà vu lingers in us to make us conscious of something we prefer to store in the subconscious under the bravado of what a resilient and brave nation we are. The question being is it resilience or indifference? Is it silence or escapism? These are the deep-rooted questions that we need to ask before we declare ourselves heroes who embrace suffering with courage.

At the national and provincial level we get statistics of how figures of terrorism have gone down dramatically. Examples of Karachi and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are quoted to give substance to the fact that we are on our way to recovery. That is encouraging; but is it enough and is it a constant trend? Not really. While bomb blasts have been reduced by 70 percent due to military operation, the APEX meetings have always expressed disappointments on progress on areas that are necessary to uproot terror: monitoring banned organisations and their emergence with other names and identities, choking terror-financing, police reforms, madrassah reforms, developing counter-narrative etc.

As far as going after banned organisations with new identities is concerned, it has been known for long that south Punjab is the sanctuary for the Punjabi Taliban, and it is from here that a lot of coordination takes place for terror attacks in the country. Muzaffargarh from which the alleged attacker of the Lahore blast hailed from is the capital of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which now operates under the name of Jamaat-ul-Ahraar, a group that has claimed responsibility for the Lahore attack. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is regarded as the most extreme Sunni terror group in Pakistan and is accused of killing hundreds of Shias after its emergence in the early 1990s. The organisation is also said to have had links with al-Qaeda. Malik Ishaq, who was a leader of the feared organisation, was implicated in dozens of cases, mostly murder. Ishaq was also accused of masterminding, from behind bars, the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, which wounded seven players and an assistant coach, and killed eight Pakistanis. His pictures with Rana Sanaullah were a frequent item in social media. Malik Ishaq and his two sons were finally killed in July 2015 in a police encounter. Shuja Khanzada’s killing was also linked with the group’s retaliation to his death.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) track record of denials and then reluctant admission creates a very uneasy reading. Sanaullah who has denied the existence of terrorists in Punjab was quoted in an interview in 2014 for The Guardian admitting that there were 174 terrorist dens in Punjab. His relationship with Maulana Ahmad Ludhianvi, the head of the banned outfit, Sipah-e-Shabah, has been extensively reported in media where he is the chief negotiator for seat-adjustments in these constituencies. The recent pressure on the PML-N by the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf to carry out operations in Punjab has produced contradictory responses. The main difference between the army and government is whether to employ Rangers or the Elite force of the Counter Terrorism Department of the Punjab government.

This selective and as-and-when operation response enables big groups to develop smaller splinter groups and spread out to make it difficult to be apprehended. According to some sources, there are scores of terror dens that function in Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh with assurance from the Punjab government that if they stay off Punjab, the government will stay off them. All this could be just an exaggeration but the current blast in Lahore and the consequent response of the army and the government has given substance to these assumptions. The operation plan was announced by the DG ISPR in a tweet after a meeting with the top army brass. Sanaullah had a separate press conference in which he denied the existence of organised terror dens and said counterterrorism forces were already eliminating terrorists. The prime minister, in a televised address to the nation, made no mention at all of the operation or the alleged RAW agent caught by the intelligence agencies. The joint press conference by the DG ISPR and Pervez Rasheed almost confirmed the unease that the government and army have vis-à-vis the Punjab operation and raising hue and cry on the RAW agent.

The APS incident raised hope that a united Pakistan would be able to nail down terrorism and these hopes have been partially fulfilled as terrorism has declined. However, the most disturbing part is the speculation that government and army have differences on operations in Punjab to make the National Action Plan more effective. This divide is what terrorists have and will exploit to take refuge in their many secure dens that exist in parts of Punjab. Without the unity that followed the APS tragedy, Lahore and many parts of Pakistan will remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Terrorists will keep on sneaking through the crevices that exist in government’s resolve to take on sanctuaries in no-go areas hindering the ‘do’ option in favour of the die option.

The writer is a columnist and analyst and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com