IN THE space of five days in mid-February, Pakistan suffered ten acts of terrorism, affecting all four of its provinces. On February 13th a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside the provincial assembly in Punjab, including two senior police officers. On February 16th more than 80 were killed and over 200 injured when another suicide bomber targeted the throngs of worshippers at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi shrine in the southern province of Sindh. Yet more bombs killed police and soldiers in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), along the border with Afghanistan.
The attacks are all the more shocking because deaths from terrorism in Pakistan have fallen dramatically in recent years (see chart), the result of a sustained counter-terrorism campaign by the security services. Swathes of territory once lost to militants have been recovered. Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched in 2014 to retake North Waziristan, a part of FATA that had become a jihadist stronghold, was a turning point. Until then, fretful politicians had postponed confrontation with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani...Continue reading
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