- More time spent on looking for scapegoats than identifying solutions
Quetta, with a population of a little over one million, is smaller than Islamabad. However, of all the cities in the country Balochistan’s capital is the chief target of suicide-cum-gun attacks. The city has come under attacks this year month after month without any reprieve. The terrorists chose two types of targets i.e., religious minorities and the security personnel. They were on the offensive seeking out and targeting the population and its defenders. With terrorists outpacing the security agencies, this does not bode well for peace and security in the coming months.
On paper Quetta does not look like a defencelss town. It is the center of the XIIth corps of Pakistan army. The Army’s Command and Staff College is located in the city. The FC Balochistan has its headquarters in Quetta. The two forces also guard Balochistan’s borders with Afghanistan through which terrorists are supposed to penetrate into the province. Somehow or other the terrorists manage to keep the initiative in their hands as the Tuesday attack indicates. Despite all the border control and checkposts all over the town the terrorist attacked a police checkpost killing six police personnel. In the second attack on an FC checkopost, the two suicide bombers wounded eight paramilitary officials before being killed.
While one can only emphasise the need to make the intelligence agencies more result oriented, one is constrained to observe that shortsighted policies, peddled in the name of national security, adopted by two military rulers Zia and Musharraf, continue to bleed Pakistan. Zia brought in hundreds of Arabs, Chechens, Uzbek and Uyghur terrorists into the tribal areas to fight the American jihad. He also set up nurseries to train the jihadists. The TTP and IS who are attacking Hazras, Christians and security forces in Balochistan are the offshoots of Zia’s locally raised jihadi networks that included LeJ.
Political parties in a peaceful Balochistan were already becoming a part of the mainstream politics when Musharraf ordered the killing of Akbar Bugti. Both Zia and Musharraf sowed the wind and the innocent people of Balochistan along with the security personnel are reaping the whirlwind.
