Islamabad paying heavy price for nefarious state policy

Monday’s suicide bombing at a mosque in Peshawar snuffed out more than 90 lives, with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claiming responsibility for the deadly strike. – Reuters file photo

THE chickens have come home to roost for Pakistan. Notorious for aiding and abetting cross-border terrorism over the decades, Pakistan now finds itself at the receiving end. Monday’s suicide bombing at a mosque in Peshawar snuffed out more than 90 lives, with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claiming responsibility for the deadly strike. The outlawed terror group has proclaimed that it carried out the attack to avenge the death of TTP commander Umar Khalid Khurasani, who was killed in Afghanistan in August last year. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that ‘this is no less than an attack on Pakistan’, while terming terrorism as the country’s foremost national security challenge.

The audacity of the horrifying act is quite obvious: the mosque is located in the high-security Police Lines area, where the police headquarters and counter-terrorism officials are based. The TTP has upped the ante against Pakistani soldiers and cops since November last year, when it abruptly ended a ceasefire with the government. The terror outfit has been warning the police and the military to stay away from operations against its fighters in Peshawar, the capital of the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.

The Peshawar attack shows that the confidence of both China and America in Pakistan’s counter-terrorism capabilities is highly misplaced. Islamabad’s problems are compounded by the Afghan Taliban’s brazen sheltering of Tehreek leaders and fighters. The TTP’s incessant strikes belie the Taliban’s tall claims of not allowing anyone to use the Afghan soil for attacks against any country. Already reeling under an economic crisis, Pakistan ought to take an unambiguous stand against terrorism in any form. If it wants Afghanistan to not harbour terrorists, it should do the needful too by dismantling the terror infrastructure on its own soil. India has rightly sensed that Pakistan is frustrated over its ‘increasing inability to use terrorists and their proxies.’Given its dubious track record, it will be an uphill task for Islamabad to regain the trust of the international community, whose support it badly needs to fight terrorism.