Unabated militancy

The catalogue of horrors recording the toll militancy has taken on Pakistan grows with every passing day.

Yesterday alone stories in this paper recorded the following: carnage in Chakwal after a suicide bomber struck an imambargah; Baitullah Mehsud’s claim that the weekend suicide attack in Islamabad was carried out by one of his foot soldiers; fighting between militants and security forces which claimed 18 lives in the Anbar valley of the Mohmand Agency, not far from Peshawar; that a second suicide bomber may still be at large in Chakwal; the warning of an attack in neighbouring Attock; a girls’ school blown up in Bannu; renewed militant activity in Bajaur; and that tension has risen in Buner after Taliban militants refused to leave the area on the demand of a local jirga.

While it is important to remember that defeating militancy will be a long, difficult and messy affair, Pakistanis have the right to question the state’s response so far in many, many areas. Consider Baitullah Mehsud. Ensconced in his quasi-kingdom in South Waziristan, the man has seemingly let loose a reign of terror on Pakistan cities in recent months, ostensibly as retribution for US drone strikes in the tribal areas.

But even today, Mehsud picks up a phone and calls reporters and news agencies around the world to lay claim to all sorts of acts of violence with astonishing ease. Can the Pakistan security forces do absolutely nothing to nab or attack this man? And if our military resources are indeed so poor, can we not elicit the cooperation of the Americans to target him? Surely doing nothing — which, other than periodic denunciations by public officials, is what we are doing right now — is not an option.

Or consider the attack on the Manawan police training school on the outskirts of Lahore. The security forces are in the cross-hairs of the militants and have been attacked on numerous occasions in recent months. Surely Manawan was an obvious potential target, so why was it not better defended? As the attack unfolded it became clear there had been little thought of developing primary, secondary and tertiary lines of defence for the school. Or consider the case of Swat.

Three phases of Operation Rah-i-Haq and the militants remained undefeated. Have there been lessons learned? Has the military studied where its tactics went wrong? Reliance on inaccurate artillery shelling from a distance versus having more boots on the ground — does the military know any better about the way to fight such battles now? And what of the politicians? They fought for a political deal with the militants, but abductions, floggings and the Taliban’s writ have continued. Is anyone, anywhere who is part of the state apparatus even learning, let alone adapting?