Nation’s resolve against rising terrorism

A DSP and three of his squad members embraced martyrdom while six police officials got injured in a planned terrorist attack on a police station followed by an IED blast on DSP’s vehicle in district Lakki Marwat in the wee hours on Thursday.

According to the details, the terrorists first attacked the Sadar police station with modern and heavy weapons but the police guards on duty gave a befitting response and repelled the terrorist’s attack successfully. Meanwhile, the DSP vehicle rushing toward Police Station was targeted by the miscreants through IED which resulted in the martyrdom of four Police Personnel including DSP Muhammad Iqbal and his squad members.

A fresh wave of terrorism befell the country while a significant upsurge has been noticed in terrorist activities in settled districts of KP including Lakki Marwat, DI Khan, Bannu, and Tank along with continuous incidents of kidnapping, ransom, and public intimidation in newly merged districts of Erstwhile FATA, Balochistan, and Sindh. The gravity of the situation and volume of the threat was of such a serious nature that the banned terrorist outfits carried out well-planned attacks against high-value targets such as the Peshawar Police Line attack and the recent killing of a serving senior military officer that not only exposed the weakness of security mechanism but also illustrates the access and ingress of terrorist outfits in government departments and LEAs.

Ironically, our Security forces are under continuous attacks from terrorists within the country and from across the Pak-Afghan border but the ruling political elite is aggressively pursuing its political agenda and is involved in an unceasing political dogfight. Currently, our brave security forces are fighting the terrorists with courage and gallantry in different parts of the country but the incumbent government has put the long-planned urgently needed All Parties Conference (APC) on the back burner and verbal condemnation of recurrent acts of terrorism had been considered sufficient by the ruling political elite that caused great concerns among the public.

The banned terror outfits reestablished their infrastructure and mobilized their sleeper cells in border regions in the past few years due to no implementation of the National Action Plan in the post-operation Zerb-e-Azb scenario. The terror incidents gained an upsurge in 2019 while this trend witnessed a continued uptick in the coming years with a significant increase in the aftermath of a so-called failed peace deal between the government and banned TTP last year. Realistically, there were persistent calls from the public, civil society, and media regarding the growing risks of a resurgence of terrorism, regrouping, and unlawful activities of the members of banned outfits in KP’s border regions but neither the local administrations nor provincial and central governments responded to the outcry of the public until this monster surrounds the least secured and ill-governed border areas in the country.
Presently, the menace of terrorism has again shaped into a grave challenge for the Pakistani nation, while the reports suggest that the miscreants are well equipped this time with the latest weapons left behind by the US military during withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The latest disaster had been reinvented by the insane decisions and thoughtless policies of our leaders who not only milked the snakelets for years but brought them back to the country while causing a great challenge to the nation’s secuirty and survival. Although brave security forces and Law Enforcement agencies are hunting down terrorists in far-flung areas and major cities in the country, there is a dire need for wholehearted political backing and national resolve agaisnt the growing evil of extremism and terrorism to curb its roots within the society.

The current political and legal battle between the government and the opposition had reduced the scope for an APC or national consensus on terrorism issues, yet the government must mobilize the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and relaunch the 19-point National Action Plan (NAP) across the country to defeat this evil on its soil. The entire Pakistani nation is behind its valiant security forces to repeat history by defeating the menace of terrorism another time, once and for all.