A Chinese engineer died in a terrorist attack in Gwadar on Friday. This was the third attack on Chinese citizens in the last six weeks. None of the perpetrators or planners in the last two attacks could be traced out and punished. The Dasu attack that claimed the lives of nine Chinese engineers was the biggest terrorist attack suffered by Chinese nationals abroad recently. While attempts were initially made by the Foreign Ministry to give it the turn of an accident, Chinese President XI Jinping took notice of the incident and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for finding out the truth, punishing the perpetrators and preventing similar Incidents from happening again. The Chinese government sent a 15-member investigation team to Dasu. Finally Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi pinned the responsibility on India’s RAW and Afghanistan’s security agency NDS. The trail went cold after that. Two weeks later a Chinese engineer was wounded in gun attack in Karachi. The Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) claimed responsibility but the government failed to trace the assailants and bring them to justice.
On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up while targeting a vehicle carrying Chinese engineers in Gwadar. The Balochistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack. Keeping in view the past performance of the authorities, one is not confident that they would be able to bring to justice the real planners and handlers.
The Chinese have been quite sympathetic but their patience seems to be wearing thin now The Chinese embassy in Pakistan has “strongly condemned” the suicide attack asking Pakistan “to take practical and effective measures” to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future. It has asked the government to conduct a thorough investigation into the attack, and severely punish the perpetrators. Further, relevant departments at all levels in Pakistan must take practical and effective measures to accelerate implementing strengthened whole-process security measures and upgraded security cooperation mechanism to ensure that similar incidents will not happen again
While countries hostile to Pakistan would like to destabilize Pakistan internally through terror attacks, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure the security of life and property of not only its citizens but also everyone else living in the country. It is here that the government is sadly deficient.
