The annual report card that the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies compiles ever so painstakingly is only marginally better this year. The total number of suicide bombings have reduced. And the total number of all terrorist incidents have also taken a downward turn, though not by too large a co-efficient. The reasons for this trend and let us hope it is indeed one could be many. PIPS itself postulates that increased military operations, better surveillance by the law and order agencies and the elimination of certain key militant leaders in US drone attacks could have had something to do with this.
This is no time to get complacent, though, or even think we are on the right track. The think-tank makes some very pertinent suggestions about the areas that need improvement. The improvement of coordination between the intelligence agencies is way up on the list. The capacity building of our law enforcement agencies is also a vitally important area. An oft-overlooked aspect is the necessity of a crackdown on terrorism financing. Another is the effort to make sure that banned outfits actually are in no position to orchestrate any attack. Though the suggestions are sensible enough, they would make sense only in a country where all the actors are indeed on the same page. In the cloak-and-dagger wars that we have on our hands, the lack of cooperation between the civil and military intelligence agencies might not merely be the result of institutional inefficiencies. And until the profile of banned outfits stops oscillating between dangerous vigilantes and useful hedges, there isnt too much to be done there either.
Though the West might not be too interested in the resolution of non-Islamist terror, we should not lose sight of it. The targeting of the Punjabi settler community in urban Balochistan and the rivalries between the Pashtun, Baloch and Urdu-speaking ethnicities in Karachi have had a tremendous spike in the countrys commercial capital. The crisis in Karachi becomes particularly sad in the case of the Pasthuns displaced from the terror-stricken north who have to face violence from different quarters down south. The incidents of terror may have become (only slightly) lesser in number but they are now far more diversified. Things have gotten worse, not better.
