TERRORIST outfits are taking full advantage of the prevailing economic and political uncertainty in the country and increasingly targeting personnel of the law-enforcing agencies in different parts of the country, especially in Balochistan and KP. In the latest incident, nine people, including eight policemen and one civilian, were martyred in a suicide attack on a Balochistan Constabulary van in the Dhadar tehsil of the Kacchi district in Bolan on Monday. The policemen were returning from the Sibi festival after performing their duties, when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden motorcycle into the van, damaging it severely.
Balochistan has long been the focus of the terrorists’ outfits being trained and financed by hostile countries and their intelligence agencies that want to derail the process of progress and development initiated by successive governments to address the chronic issues of backwardness and poverty and bring it at par with other regions of the country. This is also borne out by activities of the misguided elements against infrastructure facilities and projects with far-reaching significance for socio-economic wellbeing of the people of Balochistan including those being implemented under the historic China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. Apart from law-enforcing agencies and development projects, the militants are also attacking Chinese engineers and other manpower working on development projects, which exposes the real motives of the militants and their handlers. It is because of all this that in their condemnation messages, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo pointed out that terrorism in Balochistan was part of a nefarious design to create instability in the country and a conspiracy to keep Balochistan under-developed by creating unrest and instability in the province. An overwhelming majority of people of Balochistan now fully understands the background of such activities and extend their cooperation to the law-enforcers to foil designs of militants but some vested interests are engaged in baseless propaganda to malign the law-enforcing agencies and their personnel. It is, therefore, the duty of the elected representatives of the people at local, provincial and federal level to keep close liaison with the local population to counter the false narrative of the militants. Relevant institutions of the state should also hold intensive dialogue with the representatives of the people and the public-opinion makers and on the basis of their input formulate strategies to counter activities of terrorists and militants and implement programmes for socio-economic awareness and development of the local communities. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has asserted that law enforcement agencies, including the police and counter-terrorism departments, were working in synergy to eliminate terrorism from the country and that despite economic crisis and implementation of austerity measures in other departments, no cut has been made in the resources being provided to law-enforcing agencies to maintain peace. There is no reason to doubt his statement and the law enforcing agencies are fulfilling their professional responsibilities and offering great sacrifices for the cause of peace and security but they can accomplish the task satisfactorily only when they have full backing of all segments of the society. We have long been emphasizing in these columns that the process of establishment of educational institutions, road infrastructure, electricity network and internet coverage should be expanded in the province at a fast pace as mobility and awareness offers best options to counter propaganda of the vested interests.Corruption is rampant all over the country but its incidence is all the more alarming in Balochistan where developmental allocations are seldom spent on the approved projects and programmes and instead stacked in houses of influential people and officials. This aspect should also be taken care of.
