Crackdown on terrorism ‘has failed’

Initiative began after deadly 2014 attack on school

ISLAMABAD // The Taliban’s latest campus massacre showed that Pakistan’s crackdown on extremism has failed, analysts said. The killing of 21 people at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda on Wednesday shattered the delicate sense of security that had been growing in the north-west since the launch of a national action plan to combat extremism.

The initiative started after Pakistan’s worst extremist attack, in 2014, when Taliban gunmen stormed a Peshawar school and killed more than 150 people, most of them children.

It was described as Pakistan’s 9/ 11 for the way it united the country in shock and outrage.

The initiative was credited with making last year the least deadly in terms of militant at- tacks since the formation of the Tehreek- e- Taliban Pakistani (TTP) in 2007.

However, the similarity between Wednesday’s university assault and the one in Peshawar starkly underscored the failure of the government’s crackdown initiative, critics said. Wednesday’s attack was a message, said Peshawar-based senior analyst and retired brigadier Saad Khan, that despite the pressure the terrorists “can hit any target”. The Charsadda attack was carried out by the same Taliban faction that claimed the strike in Peshawar.

“It happened again,” said Zaheeruddin, father of Kashan Zaheer, a ninth grade student who was wounded in the 2014 attack.

“Staff and students were martyred again. The government has failed. It has not been able to provide us security.”

The national action plan included the creation of military courts, the resumption of executions after a six-year morato- rium and the intensifying of an offensive in tribal areas where extremists had operated with impunity.

The military said it had killed thousands in the campaign and swept others over the border into Afghanistan. However, critics said little had been done about key issues – including the management of thousands

The government has failed. It has not been able to provide us security Zaheeruddin the father of Kashan Zaheer, a ninth grade student who was wounded in the 2014 attack

of seminaries, widely seen as breeding grounds for intolerance.

The resumption of hangings remains controversial, with observers pointing out that the rope was no deterrent for militants who were already prepared to die for their cause.

Ajun Khan lost his only son, Asfand, a 10th grader, in the Peshawar school massacre.

“We understand their pain, we understand how one feels when one sends his son to school or university and later receives his dead body,” Mr Khan said of the families affected by victims killed in the latest strike.

He said parents of the Peshawar victims would meet yesterday to express their sympathy and to draw up a strategy – such as compulsory military training for all civilians.

“We are not safe, even parents do not feel safe, we are worried about the future,” he said.

“It is now the people’s war.”