The attacks on Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement leader Mohsin Dawar and JUI(F) chief Mualana Fazlur Rehman have luckily not succeeded, and these two luminaries have been spared to have their performance evaluated by the voters of their respective constituencies. However, the caretaker government should look upon these attacks as the shadow of things to come. Apart from their objections in principle to elections, the militants also find that elections will necessitate mass gatherings, and can be expected to attack what they perceive as targets. THe caretaker federal and provincial government should realize that it is their responsibility to ensure that law and order are maintained during elections, and while they might pass the responsibility for many things to the Ection Commission of Pakistan, it is their responsibility to ensure that campaigning can take place.
Apart from campaigning, the government should also handle urgent issues of foreign policy.Just before it was inducted, the takeover by the Taliban of Pakistan was supposed to herald a new era in which militancy would go down. Instead, it seemed, attacks by militants seemed to increase. The military was being particularly targeted, and ceasefires had to be called, a second coming when the first broke down. That probably was not a good idea, because it gave the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan that the Pakistani state was vulnerable. It also gave the TTP the impression that it was a party equal to the state, not a subject who had to submit before it. Labelling the militants Indian or American agents comes a little late, perhaps too late to be believed by anyone except those who wish to push the problem under the rug.
The problem is growing, and perhaps spiralling out of control, and remains the fault of the caretakers. The attacks on the Maulana and Mr Dawar may well have also to do with local politics, but that is no reason why they, or others, should be gunned down or blown up. The federal government should now engage with the Taliban government in Kabul without any mistaken impressions about their benignity, without any assumptions that it constitutes the mythical ‘good Taliban’ it was falsely thought they constituted when they took over in Kabul two years ago.
