Once again, Pakistan faced the deadliest wave of terror attacks in the mid of February. A series of bloody attacks across the country, including the three provincial capitals by the terrorist groups, shook the nation. More than 122 people, including women and children, were killed, and at least 348 injured in six different attacks just within two weeks. Most of the attacked were carried on by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which took the responsibility of several attacks on churches and Christian gatherings in Pakistan.

In response, the security forces and the law enforcement agencies have been conducting country-wide operations against some terrorist groups in which they killed over hundred terrorists and arrested hundreds of suspects in Punjab province alone. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif authorised the army to eliminate terrorists with full force. The Pakistan Army launched of a nationwide anti-terrorist operation on 22 February, days after a series of bloody terrorist assaults killed dozens of people across the country. The emergence of the Islamic State and Taliban resurgence have dented growing optimism over security after a decade-long war on terrorism.

Pakistan has a long history of terrorism, which cost more than 40,000 lives, but the state does not have a pro-active strategy rather reactive. Dawn, a widely read Pakistani English newspaper, says in its editorial, “The civilian and military leadership may be trying to project a firmness and decisiveness of action, but the state’s response to the recent devastating spate of terrorist attacks in the country has increasingly appeared haphazard and ill-thought-out.”

On 13 February, a suicide bomber blew himself in front of the Punjab Assembly building in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and the second biggest city of the country. The Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack. On 14 February, two people died when they tried to defuse a bomb in Quetta, the Capitan of Baluchistan province, for which Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s Al Almi faction, a sectarian militant organisation, claimed responsibility. In another attack on 15 February, a suicide bomber drove a motorcycle into a van carrying several judges in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and killed one person. On the same day, a suicide bomber killed at least five people, including three Levies personnel in Mohmand agency near Afghanistan’s boarder. In another devastated attack on 16 February, around 88 people were killed and more than 250 wounded when a suicide bomber attacked a Sufi shrine of Lal Shgahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif in Sindh province. The Islamic State, the extreme Sunni militant organisation based in Syria and Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack. Ten people died, and some 21 people injured when terrorists attempted to wreak havoc at a local court in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda district on 21 February. In a proactive action, security forces killed three suicide attackers. Again, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar took the responsibility of the attack.

Though Pakistan has been down playing the presence of the Islamic State in the country, it is alarming that the Islamic State has been taking a strong hold there. The Pakistani state’s focus is mainly the Pakistani Taliban, who are based in Afghanistan near Pakistan’s boarder. The Islamic State (IS) is becoming stronger through continues recruitment. Along with new members, many terrorists who left the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban are joining IS, because they are aligned with its ideology.

Pakistan accused Afghanistan for the attacks and said that the recent attacks in Pakistan were coordinated by terrorist based in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nasir Ali Khan said on 19 February that the Afghan refugees, who have been living in Pakistan for many years, are being used in terrorist attacks in the country. In reaction, Pakistan conducted an operation inside Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, and claimed that several militants were killed, and four camps and one training camp of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an affiliate of the Islamic State and claimed most of the bombing, were destroyed. According to Muhammad Amir Rana, a security and political analyst, from August 2014 to date, Jamaat ul Ahrar has been found involved in 116 terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

In another development, a much awaited operation in the Punjab province has been approved. Through Punjab is a base of many terrorist organisations, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, who are involved in sectarian killings, fighting in Kashmir and Afghan Jihad, the provincial government was not willing to let the rangers conduct a military operation. However, the current wave of terror has compelled the government to show its resolve through some action. Over the years, the radical organisation Lashkar-i-Tayyiba (LeT), has enjoyed safe havens in the Punjab.

The terrorism in Pakistan is not a new phenomenon. It is more or less a three-decade old problem. The first step towards tackling the menace, Pakistan has to come up with a counter narrative of terrorists, because it is more an ideological war than an operational move. “We need to admit that the driving force behind terror is a faith-inspired violent ideology that justifies terror in the name of religion”, Islamabad based columnist Babar Sattar wrote in the News International, the largest English language newspaper in Pakistan, on 18 February. Terrorist groups are able to operate and get support on the ground to execute their operations because many people believe in their ideological narrative. Former President Asif Ali Zardari alleged on 20 February that there are some madrassas who were diverting attention of Pakistani children from the right path. He says, “Some madrassas were promoting terrorism in the country and facilitating the terrorists to kill our own people in our own land.” In his column on 21 February, Saleem Safi, a Pakistan journalist, asserted, “We desperately need to develop a strong counter-narrative against extremism and against the misuse of religion for political and strategic ends.”

According to the Washington Post, an American newspaper, Pakistan’s official attitude toward a hodgepodge of religious militant groups have been more ambivalent. “Some are tolerated for their political or sectarian affiliations, other for their strong opposition to Hindu-led India,” the newspaper said on 18 February. Further the newspaper said on 16 February that Pakistan has been often accused of coddling some violent groups that serve as its proxies in India and at home while cracking down on others that oppose the Pakistani state and unleash attacks on domestic targets. It is vital that Pakistan must take action against every sectarian and militant organisation, which is involved in promoting extreme ideology and using violence as a means to challenge the state through creating fear and insecurity among the society. If Pakistan truly wants to eliminate terrorists from its soil, an operation by the security agencies and the military must target all terrorist groups, regardless of their “good” or “bad” status.

Aftab Alexander Mughal