EDITORIAL: It came as an abrupt, shocking reminder that those out to destroy peace in this country are not completely defeated yet. A small boy, his father and a young passerby were killed and 24 others injured, six of them critically, when a car bomb exploded in a residential neighbourhood of Lahore. Some reports suggest that the target was the Jamaatud Dawaa chief Hafiz Saeed, since the blast occurred near his residence. That though seems a wrong guess considering that he has been in jail for the last six months, and there is no report of any dubious activity going on at his place. In fact, his house remained safe.
The explosion was so powerful that it left a four-foot deep and eight-foot wide crater on the road damaging several houses and shops within a 100 square feet radius. Clearly, the attack was intended to cause maximum damage in a populated area. So far no one has claimed credit for it. The TTP terrorists still launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into the erstwhile tribal areas and Balochistan, but thanks to sustained intelligence-based operations, they have either been eliminated or forced to flee from the rest of the country. In targeting innocent citizens the TTP may have wanted to show that they still have the capability to terrorise the people and also to grab international attention, or it could be the deed of some proxy of the enemies of Pakistan whose decaled objective is to create instability in this country by sponsoring terrorism. That said, the bombing also raises questions about the efficacy of our own counter-terrorism measures. According to the Punjab Inspector General of Police, the law enforcement agencies had recently received nearly 65 threat alerts, and that the Counter-Terrorism Department had carried out multiple operations and arrested several terrorists. Yet the terrorists used the one chance out of 65 to succeed.
The problem is that the various intelligence agencies have been reluctant to share information about an impending threat with those directly responsible for taking timely action. It has been quite a while when it was proposed that all such information collected by civil and military intelligence agencies be coordinated under a single authority. But the plan did not gain much traction due to turf issues. Mercifully, that tiff has finally been resolved. National Intelligence Coordination Committee has now become functional. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Imran Khan presided over the committee’s inaugural session at the ISI headquarters. It is to be headed by the ISI chief while an Intelligence Bureau official is to serve as its secretary. Designated as a “platform for Intelligence Coordination/Cooperation for unified and wholesome Natural Intelligence Assessment” the forum should help nip the evil designs of terrorists and their backers in the bud.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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