It isn’t for the faint of heart, the video that the Pakistani Taliban released, showing the murder of the security personnel that they had kidnapped. While the powers that be fret over a non-paper allegedly written by a former envoy ambassador, the clear and present danger that the nation faces makes itself clear yet again. On the vanguard of those playing the lute while the republic burns is the mainstream media that has no qualms with prioritising a slew of electioneering sound bites and even fluff over incidents like the one mentioned.
Balochistan is usually referred to as Pakistan’s forgotten war, a gripe made by those analysing the province, comparing it to the treatment that the war on terror gets. Whereas Balochistan doesn’t, indeed, get the coverage it deserves, the comparison is incorrect as the troubled north-west is woefully undercovered as well.
Pakistan’s national security paradigm has been designed with a specific plan for the northwest. A plan that makes it difficult to apprehend the militants at the best of times and one that doesn’t counter them at all at the worst. The state’s policy of militarily engaging the militants and then appeasing them and then engaging them again has been giving lifelines to the militants all the while ensuring that the anti-militant tribal lashkars are taken out one by one, mafia style. Even the “good” militants throw terrible tantrums when they don’t get what they want.
The Difa-e-Pakistan Conference, held yesterday in Rawalpindi, had amongst its attendees, members of several banned organisations. Some of these organisations wore the fig-leaf of having converted themselves into “welfare bodies”; others, not even that. Though the freedom of speech affords many liberties to citizens, it would still merit mention that many of the speakers made speeches not against the sitting government but democracy itself.
The menace that plagues us doesn’t hide itself well and, apparently, doesn’t really need to.