The two bomb blasts in Karachi on last Friday, which took four lives and injured over three dozen, underscore a bleak fact: terrorists are still at work, and the strategies deployed by the present administration to preempt and prevent them from carrying out their deadly acts are not fully working. This should worry a government that has made restoration of society's broken law and order a centerpiece of its governance agenda. The aim of those who targetted a mosque this Friday is not difficult to ascertain. The places of worship are also community centres of social interaction. When these are hit and people are killed while saying their prayers, terrorism acquires a profane seriousness, suggesting that nothing is sacred and safe from terrorists.
Additionally, the area that the terrorists chose to plant bombs is populated with Afghan migrants. It is not unreasonable to assume that an additional purpose of the attack was to whip up insecurity among smaller communities of the city, fraying the already weak level of comfort between them and the local inhabitants. Ethnic riots after all are not new to Karachi and it was not long ago when the various groups of the city pulled out their guns and pressed triggers at the smallest provocation in a vitiated social environment. This adds more urgency to the unavoidable task of sketching a comprehensive and efficacious strategy to minimise incidents of terrorism, and save explosive cities like Karachi from falling a prey to terrorists designs.
The governor of Sindh, Air Marshal (retd) Azeem Daudpota, is right in saying that it is hard to forestall bomb blasts and other such acts of terrorism. He, however, should have been a trifle more sensitive to the obvious implications of this statement, which, in the present context, might be seen as an unintended admission of helplessness in the face of terrorism. Fighting terrorism is a herculean exercise, made more difficult by the kind of hit-and-run, cloak-and-dagger, plant-and-disappear methods the terrorists use these days. But one of the cardinal principles of the contract between the citizens and the state is about safety of life and property. The state enjoys powers and privileges and a certain ascendency over its subjects because it is supposed to protect them against assaults on their freedom of life.
So irrespective of the tough nature of the challenge that tackling terrorism is, this administration, which is as resourceful in terms of the unfettered powers it enjoys as any can ever be in Pakistan, must measure up to it. Far too many incidents of terrorism have taken place in the past and far too few culprits, if any at all, have been caught. If the government Mr Daudpota represents wants to prove that it is different from the previous dispensations in its efficiency, it should rectify this dispiriting imbalance between terrorism-related crime and official performance. Shrugging shoulders and blaming it on a 'foreign hand' will not help.
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