09/27/09
Post-Eid terror
Dawn Editorial
Sunday, 27 Sep, 2009
The Taliban have demonstrated tenacity and proved they are capable of sowing terror whenever and wherever they wish.
The Taliban have made a shocking comeback post-Eid with several deadly attacks while the nation was still in a celebratory mood.
The blasts in Peshawar and Bannu on Saturday left 17 people dead with nearly 100 injured. Near Bannu, too, they killed seven tribal elders on Thursday who were on a peace mission. In spite of the reverses they have suffered in Swat, and the death and arrest of some of their ringleaders, the Taliban have demonstrated tenacity and proved they are capable of sowing terror whenever and wherever they wish.
Follow up:
The military operations and the drone attacks have no doubt inflicted heavy casualties on them, and they have ‘lost’ Swat, but their command structure is still intact and their sources of funding and arms remain virtually unscathed. With three months still to go, they have so far this year committed 382 acts of terror, with thousands of innocent people, including security personnel, killed, maimed and injured.
Let us not suffer from any delusions: the nation is in for a long-drawn-out battle, and it is time the democratic government prepared the nation and the security apparatus for it. There is no quick-fix solution and a pacification of the Taliban-infested areas is nowhere in sight. How things have come to such a pass need not be retold. For more than a decade the security establishment, with help from our cold-war allies, trained, funded and armed the mujahideen for the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’.
Even when the Soviets had gone home, Islamabad chose the Taliban as favourites when the victorious mujahideen fell out. No wonder this country became a big recruiting and training ground for the Taliban. The tragedy was that even when Pakistan became a ‘front-line state’ following 9/11, Islamabad still did not take on the Taliban with the kind of single-minded devotion that was needed.
We have no choice now but to take the war against the rebels to its logical conclusion. What is at stake is our way of life. A microscopic minority of bigots cannot be allowed to destroy the values on which Jinnah founded Pakistan.
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