By evaluating our performance all through the last decade we might be able to come to some logical conclusions of where we have gone wrong.
The military launches operations with fancy codenames, they are all brilliantly organised and conducted with supreme professionalism and yield desired effects, and then the triumphant army in all its pomp and glory withdraws. Militant leaders are killed with evidences of heavy losses on both sides.
The army rejoices and pays homage to its valiant soldiers and martyrs and the militants re-group, re-organise and re-attack with an increased velocity and vengeance.
The world is busy bashing the Pakistani government, the Pakistan army and the ISI for playing a duplicitous role and thus demanding more.
Like a bunch of obdurate children, we keep on playing the same game over and over again. There are two possibilities. Either we don’t know how to play a new one, or maybe we like this one too much to shift to another one. Anyways, like all other parents, ours keep on reprimanding and punishing us for not following prescribed orders and instructions.
The increased assaults of the terrorists from both within and across the border scream for a change in the Pakistani stance and response towards terrorism. The freedom with which the Taliban have been displaying aggression towards innocent Pakistanis in comparison to the inability of the state to exercise its will has turned us into an international laughing stock.
Mosques, shrines, schools, universities, marketplaces, banks, offices, police stations, check posts and now kidnapping and killing of young children either going to school or running freely busy in Eid festivities is what we endure continuously.
This increased audacity needs to be taken seriously by the state. If still not tackled seriously, this may became a precursor of yet another deadly spell of terrorism that may be impossible to reverse.
LUBNA UMAR
Islamabad
