Why Pakistan fails to prevent terrorist attacks?

Terrorist attacks amounting to war crimes are increasing in Pakistan, with militant groups, including the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and some other banned outfits, operating with "virtual impunity".

With every incident, there is only one stereotypical response from the government, the media and the general public. At times, without committing to look within, foreign hand is also blamed.

Considering that Operation Zarb-e-Azb is still on, the attack on the army-run school leaves a very crucial question mark on the security situation in Pakistan. Security analysts are concerned about the frequency of breaches, and the measures that law-enforcing authorities and the government, both federal and provincial, can take in preventing incidents of this brutal nature in the future.

It appears that the country's civilian and military institutions are either "unable" or "unwilling" to prevent terrorist attacks. A decade ago, when the US finalised a strategy to bomb Afghanistan 'back to the stone age', President Pervez Musharraf made plans to build a new republic based on the principles of anti-terrorism and liberalism by making his country a frontline state for US designs.

The irony is that while Afghanistan now seems limping to a semblance of normalcy, the frontline state is bruised and confused about how to wage war against terror, tilting like a pendulum from talks with the dreaded outfits to fighting them militarily. At the time when Musharraf took the decision, almost everyone agreed it could prove to be catastrophic for a loosely-knit nation like Pakistan.

Human Rights Watch has documented how not only numerous government installations and law- enforcement personnel have been targeted by the Taliban, but also humanitarian activists involved in polio vaccination. A climate of fear impedes media coverage of militant groups, and the Taliban and other armed groups regularly threaten media organisations. As security forces also routinely violate basic rights in the course of counter-terrorism operations, with suspects frequently detained without charge or convicted without a fair trial, an unending cycle of vengeance looms in the air.

Why is Pakistan failing to combat terrorism? One answer could be that even after becoming a frontline state after 9/11, it has not been able to implement a consensus-based national policy for countering terrorism. Multiple counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism agencies, ideological differences on the concept of war on terror in decision-making circles, and the minimal role of the civil administration in formulating and shaping foreign and national security policies are the other reasons.

The National Crisis Management Cell and the National Counter Terrorism Authority are yet to draft workable plan.

The Peshawar attack should be taken as a horrifying wake-up call for political parties and vital decision-making quarters in Pakistan to keep their differences aside and mend their ways to work together for giving the children of Pakistan a safe country to live in -- a country they can live long, without fear of getting 'martyred' in incidents of this sort. May peace and sanity prevail.

It's a failure of the Pakistani analysts that they have not discussed the counter-terrorism initiatives of even Turkey and Indonesia, which, after a wave of terrorist incidents, launched exhaustive action plans to prevention as well as investigate and prosecute the perpetrators.

Huma Sadaf is a Lahore-based journalist