The dead Osama seems to be as lethal for Pakistan as was the living Osama. So true to their challenge, the Taliban struck with full force a paramilitary training centre near Peshawar on Friday morning, killing nearly 80 persons, mostly the trainees.
Over a hundred were injured, many critically. As the Frontier Constabulary trainees, who had completed training and were boarding buses at the gate of the FC Training Centre, Shabqadar, for a week-long furlough there was an explosion, possibly remote-controlled, and then a motorbike-riding suicide-bomber rammed into the pell-mell crowd. "This is the first revenge for Osama's martyrdom," the Tehrike-i-Taliban Pakistan's spokesman informed a news agency, adding "Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
It's not that such a retaliatory action on the part of Taliban was not expected, and that the security personnel training centre was taken by surprise. According to the academy's commandant, a host of precautionary measures were in place otherwise the death toll would have been much higher, given that some 880 trainees were in the process of leaving for homes on that fateful morning were targeted. But even then, the size of the massacre and mayhem the Taliban inflicted is simply mind-boggling.
That such a large number of paramilitary personnel were killed and many more rendered inoperative with one fell swoop, it's a measure of the threat the Taliban pose and seemingly can carry out at will even when their 'back has been broken'. There is hardly a sign to show that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is rid of militancy, even when the province has raised the strength of the police force almost three-fold, to some 85,000 now, and there is also a huge presence of the Frontier Constabulary (FC) force, partly financed by the United States.
Isn't it a tragic irony that as our security personnel became the terrorists' prime target and were killed in a number that far exceeds the US-led coalition's total life-losses in the 10-year old Afghan war, the international suspicion persists that some rogue elements in our intelligence agencies might have harboured Osama bin Laden. Also, how baffling that when the Taliban don't spare civil and military targets throughout Pakistan, the CIA-operated drone attacks continue to strike in the border areas, with non-combatants suffering disproportionately more casualties. That Pakistan has to live with this Catch-22 situation, it is indeed a formidable challenge for our policy-makers to contend with. Indeed serious contradictions have beset our national strategy vis-à-vis the Taliban militancy, particularly in the Fata region. That calls for urgent policy review to harmonise action with ground realities. There should be an open admission that the military operations in the tribal areas may have won the forces some spectacular victories, but at other end of the tunnel, there is no light.
Obviously, the military-specific strategy has run into heavy waters, which couldn't be ruled out as a consequence because the first-thing-first - socio-economic and political development - was not being done. Even after the much-touted reforms packages for the tribal areas in real terms, there is nothing on the ground.
Now that the opportunity for a revised and updated outlook has materialised in the light of emerging realities in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Taliban are being accessed both by the international coalition and Karzai regime, the time has come that our government should talk to our Taliban. May be some egos would feel hurt and there is also some resistance to such a rethinking. But, the truth is that there is no alternative to a dialogue with them - even in terms of an out-of-the-box solution.
Look, what they did at Shabqadar and earlier in areas said to be clear of them like Dir and Bajaur. They have survived all that the government could do to defeat them in the battlefield. And, rightly or wrongly, they are fired with the urge to embrace death for the cause they espouse, and when a person decides to kill himself, there is not much that can be done to stop him. The alternative is to broach a dialogue with them, even if it's in terms of an out-of-the-box approach. After all, what is the shame in talking to one's own people.