The fact that our fellow countrymen are denouncing the increase in violent crimes yet our state is not paying attention is both disturbing and unfortunate. Two explosions, the kidnapping of Abdullah Baig, a senior minister; the assassination of security personnel; extortion; and the targeted execution of Idrees Khan, an ardent advocate of peace in the valley, are insufficient to alert the guards.
It is inexplicable how our leadership pretends to be unaware of any hostile entities while TTP and other outlawed groups openly take responsibility for the atrocities committed. Or perhaps we, as a nation, have developed the habit of sleeping until diseases become incurable. We have become so accustomed to shutting our eyes like pigeons when a cat is at the front door. It is quite easy to clip the wings of this emerging evil rather than wait and see it prevail and then launch a massive-scale operation that causes huge loss of lives and property.
Pakistan has already paid a price for the so-called war against terror. We lost almost 83,000 lives, and this operation cost us 126 billion dollars. Thousands were injured and displaced from their homes. The state launched different operations in GB, Balochistan, and KPK. Maj Gen Iftikhar said Pakistan has witnessed an 86 percent reduction in terror attacks since 2013 and a 45 percent decrease in 2020 compared to the previous year (2019), he said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies prevented more than half of all terror threats in the previous year. Suicide bombings have also seen a 97 percent decline since 2009. Despite fencing along the Afghan border and other strict security measures, the insurgency appears to be returning to its former strongholds.
When a delegation of clergy met the Taliban in Kabul to settle their differences, the peace negotiators made headlines. However, all of these efforts appear to be in vain because our policymakers are not paying attention to terrorist psychology. It is an unfortunate fact that, whether we like it or not, this disease was developed in our laboratories to counter the Soviet threat. What was overlooked, however, was what would happen to these brainwashed jihadists after the war. Our leaders’ misperception or misinterpretation of those circumstances continues to haunt us.
Nonetheless, after so many military operations and sacrifices, we have returned to the point where we began this truly awful journey. We are pleading with the terrorists for peace. What a tragedy this is. This can be attributed to security institutions’ failure to combat the prevailing militancy.
The process by which a person’s personality is formed is known as socialization. For many decades, these hostile individuals have lived in a bloodshed culture. We created a generation in the labs through the administration of false religious ideology, and those children who grew up watching blood spilled in the streets and playing with pistols instead of toys have now reached adulthood. It is now a part of their personality. Peace and tranquility are foreign concepts to them. This violent culture will be passed down to the next generation, and the cycle will continue unless a prudent strategy is invented to address the underlying core issues. Peace talks are the least effective solution in the box.
The peace talks will give jihadists an opportunity to interpret the peace process as a state weakness, and they will use it to settle their scores. They had already begun their illegal activities and had been reported by various media groups. Instead of making flimsy excuses and holding peace talks with banned organizations, it is high time for our policymakers to devise long-term counter-terrorism policies.
The government should launch public awareness campaigns in affected areas to protect our youth from being honey-trapped by terrorists. Launching various development projects, rehabilitation facilities, and job possibilities in GB, KPK, and Balochistan will aid in preventing our children from enlisting in rebel bands. In the interim, the threat posed by terrorism needs to be treated extremely seriously, and Jihadists need to be dealt with iron hands. If not, it won’t take long for it to spread to other regions of the nation, and many of us will once again only dream of peace.
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