#dnaEdit: Clear danger

The blast apparently triggered by a suicide-bomber on the Pakistan side of the Wagah crossing, which killed 60 and injured 110, on Sunday evening is slightly different from similar blasts and killings in other parts of Pakistan like Peshawar, Karachi or Quetta. Sunday’s blast has occurred very near the India-Pakistan border, and the people killed and injured were those who had witnessed the daily evening ceremony of the retreat by the Pakistan Rangers and the Indian Border Security Force on each side. The ceremony is usually watched by hundreds of civilians on both sides of the border. There is confusion because two banned organisations, the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Jundallah have claimed responsibility for the attack. The Ahrar spokesperson who rang up the Dawn newspaper had apparently said that the attack was in response to the Pakistan army’s operations in North Waziristan against the terror elements.

There is need for alert on the Indian side though the incident — strictly speaking — is an internal affair of Pakistan. The fact that the attack has occurred near the border should make the Indian security establishment sit up.

Though it would not be right to speculate on why the attack took place near Wagah, it is necessary to trace the strategy of the terror groups. It could be a possible signal that what has remained an endemic problem of Pakistan will now spill over across the border, and it will draw India into the terror vortex as it were. Even as there was exchange of heavy firing across the international border and the Line of Ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir in September, Pakistan army was engaged in military operations in North Waziristan, which had become the hotbed of the terrorist groups in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. It seemed that the border hostilities provided a smokescreen as it were for the Pakistan army to attack the terror groups at the other end of the country. The terror attack at Wagah is a message from the terrorists that they are capable of taking the battle to any corner of Pakistan, including the India-Pakistan border. 

There is also the possibility that, as has been disclosed in Burdwan, where the jihadi elements from Bangladesh were trying to use small towns and villages on the Indian side to attack the government in Dhaka, the Pakistan-based jihadi groups, too, may not hesitate to use the porous border to operate against Islamabad from the Indian side. Given the uneasy equations between the two countries, it will make things doubly difficult for both India and Pakistan to deal with the terrorists. As the uncovering of the Burdwan terrorist base has brought the Indian and Bangladesh security establishments to cooperate with each other, it would be necessary for the Indian and Pakistan agencies to work together in countering the terrorist groups in Pakistan.

In broader terms, south Asian countries, and more specifically the member-countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), will have to cooperate with each and evolve a common strategy against the terror elements. It is known that Pakistan terror elements have been using the Bangladesh and Nepal routes to infiltrate into India. Uncovering of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) operations in Burdwan has shown that India could be used by the terrorists to enter Bangladesh. Similarly, the terror groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be tempted to slip into Bangladesh, Nepal and India, and broaden their bases. There is a clear need then for a SAARC initiative to combat terrorism. Bangladesh has seen the need. It remains for Pakistan to accept that it will need the help of its south Asian neighbours to fight its internal terror challenges.