It was a first for Faisalabad. The car bomb that exploded at a CNG station was the first in a city that had so far not had any incidents of the sort. The blasts victims and their families, which include 20 killed and more than 100 injured, will be compensated in accordance with what the Punjab law minister referred to at the press conference in a markedly cold manner, as a set procedure. And this is the ministers home town. The reduction of human tragedies to mere statistics in the media, and then on finance department files is inevitable. But the job of the politicians is to empathize in an effective manner.
Though mere empathy with victims isnt going to cut it anymore. The Punjab government has seen its share of criticism, not as much from the federal government as much as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, for not stepping up to the plate when it comes to militants groups. The PML(N)s hesitation to clearly denounce the religious extremists in as unequivocal a manner as the ANP has cannot be attributed only to the formers conservative bearing. This is because these religious outfits are also an increasingly powerful political force as well. The electoral politics in the radicalized parts of the province, which are more in number than many would imagine, is increasingly being disrupted by the madrassah networks. The social networks of liberal politicians, or even conservative politicians who refuse to have anything to do with these groups, are being disrupted like never before. Supping with the devil might be political expediency for a lot of the local politicians. This is where the state should and can step in. All is lost when the sanctity of the electoral process is compromised. It leads to capitulation to the militants in all spheres of society.
Since the attack was ostensibly directed at the office of an intelligence agency, many questions have also been raised yet again on the role of the spooks in the war against the terrorists. Takes much away from the western suspicions of duplicity, though hell-bent detractors would still attribute incidents like these to the lack of control on certain renegade groups.
