Daily Times Editorial June 25, 2013

Einstein’s wisdom About 20 gunmen dressed in Gilgit Scouts uniforms tortured, then riddled the bodies of 10 foreign tourists with bullets at the Fairy Meadows, Diamer base camp near Nanga Parbat on Sunday. A Pakistani woman mountaineer and local guide were also reportedly amongst those killed in an unprecedented attack in an area hitherto free of violence and militancy. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar conceded in the National Assembly (NA) that the area had no security escort arrangements for foreign tourists. The attackers abducted two local guides and with their help reached the base camp. One of those guides is dead, the other under interrogation. Two claims of responsibility competed for the dastardly deed. The Jundullah sectarian group was first off the mark with a claim of responsibility, followed some time later by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said a new unit called Jundul Hafsa had carried out the attack in revenge for the killing of the TTP second-in-command Waliur Rehman in a drone strike recently. The count of the dead includes six Ukrainians, three Chinese, two Slovaks, one each Lithuainian and Nepalese, and a Chinese-American. As though the terrorists had not already virtually brought the country to its knees by their unremitting actions, the past week having seen a flurry of such attacks, this latest incident must pose a serious question mark over the future of foreign mountaineering and trekking expeditions in the country, one of the last vestiges of tourism left in terrorism-afflicted Pakistan. The government has responded with anger and condemnation, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif describing the incident as “inhuman and cruel”, while Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar moved swiftly to suspend the Chief Secretary and IG Police of Gilgit-Baltistan and order the setting up of an inquiry committee whose findings would be shared with parliament. The bodies of the killed were in the meantime transported to Islamabad where, after post mortems, they were being handed over to their respective embassies for shipping home. Also, any remaining foreign tourists in the area are being evacuated (never to return?). The responses from the government, which has promised the usual ‘thorough investigation’, and the NA, which passed a unanimous resolution of condemnation moved by the PTI’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi, smack of the traditional ritualistic reactions. These attempt to camouflage the precarious state of the country because of terrorism and the failure of the security forces to quell it behind brave words about the ‘image’ of Pakistan and accusations (from some quarters) of the ubiquitous ‘foreign hand’, are all too disconcertingly familiar. Admittedly, the government is new and has hardly had time to settle in. In fact the traditional 100-day ‘honeymoon’ normally available to new governments has been conspicuously absent this time, a sign of the dire straits the country is in. From the energy crisis to the economy, a grip on eroded governance to terrorism, the new government has its work cut out for it. It is an unenviable bed of thorns they have inherited. Chaudhry Nisar has since taking over the interior ministry been on record several times regarding the security architecture’s failings. He reiterated the problem in the NA while discussing this latest grisly incident. The point is that unless the new national security policy under discussion manages to bring all the security and intelligence forces under one umbrella (possibly the National Counter Terrorism Authority?), we will be hard put to it to “deal with the uphill task of combating terrorism” (Chaudhry Nisar). Complacency and ‘business as usual’ in this respect is our biggest enemy, not to mention the normal inertia that creeps in eventually after a few hours or days of being on alert. A radical overhaul therefore, of the security and intelligence apparatus is critical if the terrorists are to be defeated. This involves the civilian and military, federal and provincial authorities being on the same page (and under the same umbrella sharing their data base), which according to Chaudhry Nisar is now a given. Certainly going on in the old manner and traditional ways is a prophecy of doom foretold. Einstein once said, “Insanity is going on doing the same things and expecting different results.” Heed the words of wisdom of one of the greatest scientists humanity has produced.