Now Nice

Wave of terror continues

A few things are immediately clear from the Nice attack. One, France, despite the recent Paris attack, was not prepared to deal with another sudden attack. The Bastille Day parade was a natural soft target. And a country in a declared state of emergency – because it came under ISIS attack – security arrangements were woefully inadequate. The driver was able to crush people for more than two kilometers before the police finally took him out. Two, continental Europe, which is no better placed than France itself when it comes to preempting – or dealing with – terrorism, needs a new, wholesome policy.

Three, the attack has not yet been claimed (by ISIS or al Qaeda), but it presents an instructive novelty in the nature of terrorist attacks. The truck idea, it turns out, was almost ingenious from the enemy’s point of view. It needed no ammunition or explosives, hence left no security or money trail. It shows how the enemy is constantly evolving as the coalition against it is expanding. And four, the international security landscape has changed dramatically in the last few months. Only recently ISIS was on the run after the Russian intervention finally turned the war around in Syria. Then, quite suddenly, it came to Europe, Saudi Arabia, and even Bangladesh.

There are important lessons here for Pakistan. Despite being familiar with, and having suffered from, terrorism longer than most other countries, we are still not too well prepared. There is still very little, if any, progress on NAP and NACTA, which were the lynchpin of our counter-terrorism strategy. With time we have not learnt to preempt terrorism as much as react and respond to it. We must, of course, offer condolences and sympathies to the French in their dark hour. But we must also learn the right lessons, and improve our preparedness, just as the French are now going to do.