Lessons From Another Lahore Tragedy

They have struck again. Let’s first see the situation through the lens of what we call objectivity. Another horrendous act of terrorism has targeted Lahore in the space of one month. How the terrorists were able to enter the police training school in Manawan, Lahore and why they were not stopped is a million dollar question that remains unanswered. What appears to be a major security lapse has reportedly claimed the life of eight police officials and four terrorists. The incident should come as a rude shock to our security and intelligence agencies that should have been adequately alerted after they had received information that an attack was imminent on March 25.

The attack follows shooting at the Sri Lankan team in Lahore early this month in which precious lives had been lost. The location where the latest incident took place is a highly sensitive area, being only a few kilometres from the Wahga border. The fact that it took the security agencies eight long hours to kill or capture the terrorists shows how well trained and determined the latter were.

This is a serious development putting Pakistan once again on the world’s terrorism map. The incident took place only a day after the US President Barack Obama declared that the US forces would target terrorists’ hideouts inside Pakistan. This is understandable because drone attacks in the tribal areas have caused the extremists to carry out suicide bombings and other terror activities in the settled part of the country such as Lahore and Islamabad.

Unfortunately, this is not the first incident of its kind. Four policemen were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up near Iqbal Town Police Station, Lahore in August last year. The Lahore blast had come in the wake of the Peshawar blast where the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) personnel were targeted. It should be noted that Mullah Omer had claimed responsibility for the blast and had threatened more such attacks in future. Terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) are major examples of militant outfits that changed their name and are still operational. In January this year, a suicide bomber had blown himself up near the Lahore High Court. More than 25 people, most of them policemen, were killed and dozens injured.

There are lessons to be learnt from this tragic incident. The ability of the law enforcement agencies to deal with the threat of extremism in urban areas stands exposed. The police force should be specifically trained and equipped to deal with terrorists. The intelligence agencies must improve their intelligence network by infiltrating the terrorist organizations. The country has confronted one form of terror or another during the past few years.

This incident shows that there are loopholes in the security mechanism besides absence of coordination between police and intelligence agencies. It has been reported many a time that the security agencies have failed to act timely despite having reports that an act of terror might take place at a certain location and time. The solution lies in political will against a determined enemy. The authorities must realise the gravity of the situation and launch a severe crackdown based on credible, real time intelligence to root out these elements. These incidents should send a stern reminder to the federal and provincial governments that it is time to sit together and make a coordinated effort against extremist elements operating in the midst of us.

Since the involvement of the foreign hands cannot be ruled out in the whole incident, the investigations should be carried out on broader lines. The country’s security apparatus will have to reinforce its security mechanism to ensure that the terrorists who might be present in the city are apprehended before they are able to carry out their nefarious designs.

Now the subjective part: There’s another side to the whole issue of extremism and terrorism and that is the human angle. Using the brains is not always the best policy; it is sometimes good to listen to your heart as well. Our whole generations seem to have been sacrificed at the altar of the Afghan ‘jihad’ and later the war on terror. The heart-wrenching wailings of the mother who lost her son should be enough to prick our conscious. Tragically, it does not end here. She is not the first and perhaps not the last mother to bear the unbearable loss of her son.

Tragedy knows no place and boundary. This has been happening in the tribal areas for many years; this has happened here. The ‘terrorist’ whose picture has been splashed in the print and electronic media is surely a son of her mother. May be he has a family and siblings. May be he failed to understand the situation he found himself in. Surely, he opened his eyes in a tribal society that was totally cut off from the rest of the country, the rest of the world in fact. There are all the indications that he never attended a school, perhaps never played in a playground and grew up in the surroundings that offered no opportunities to excel in life. Thus, he became a ready fodder of terrorism. Is that his fault?

The remedy does not lie in bowing to the dictates of the United States. That is not to say that we turn our backs on a superpower that has ruled us since the day we were born. That cannot happen overnight. But a beginning has to be made somewhere, sometime. I truly believe that we do not want to continue killing our own people. The whole of Pakistan, including the tribal areas, is one family; if one member of the family is hurt the entire unit should feel the pain. Take a pause, sit back, and think about it!