On the face of it, the Katlang operation on Saturday was straightforward. It was another intelligence-based operation, one of many that have been conducted, and which have resulted in the killing of religious militants. However, was it another such operation, or was it a case of innocent shepherds being killed in their grazing area? Is there any mystery to the incident, and will the inquiry promised by KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur yield any result? Under the circumstances, is it even needed? The whole incident seems to have become, like everything else, a political football. It also seems to have become, a little unusually, an excuse for the PTI’s federal and provincial leaders to wash dirty linen in public. This is in addition to the federal Information Minister claiming that there were no civilian casualties, and the KP government spokesman insisting that there were.
It does seem counterintuitive that where the military operation against the hijackers of the Jaffer Express should have been carried out without any civilian casualties, the same military should have got it so badly wrong. The Federal Information Minister’s claim is therefore understandable. However, the whole episode once again puts under spotlight the question of the PTI’s attitude towards terrorism. It should be noted that the PTI insists that there should be no fresh operation, especially in KP, where it controls the provincial government, even though that province is perhaps the worst hit by terrorism, certainly by religious militants’ terrorism. Even the Katlang incident was against religious militants. There is clearly a difference of approach between the PTI and the government, though the former’s refusal to attend the National Security Committee over the train deprived it of the opportunity to make that difference known to the general public.
The proposed inquiry may end up going into unhelpful areas, such as the amount of control exerted by each link in the chain of command, without resolving the issue. Certainly, no one thinks the war against the terrorists should be conducted at the cost of the very citizenry the war is being fought for, but at the same time, no one should argue that terrorism should be shown any leniency. If any law has been broken, due remedy should be made, but the tried and tested accountability mechanisms should not be interfered with.
