The deadly attacks on women students in Pakistan’s restive province of Balochistan on Saturday yet again proves that the government simply lacks the political and moral will to take on the religious extremists who have been holding the country to ransom.
More than 25 students were killed in two attacks – first on a bus carrying them, by a woman suicide bomber no less, and later at the hospital where the injured were admitted – thus completing a particularly macabre chain of events.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a terror outfit with links to the Taliban, immediately claimed responsibility for the killings saying it was their revenge for a government security operation which killed three militants and two women earlier this month.
“The suicide attack on the bus was carried out by one of our sisters. She boarded the student bus and blew herself up,” a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi spokesman Abubakar Siddiq told newspapers over the phone.
“Then we carried out a second suicide attack at the hospital and our fighters killed several people. We did this because security forces killed our fighters and their wives in Kharotabad.”
The fact that spokesmen of terror outfits brazenly and openly claim responsibility by calling up newspapers and TV channels immediately after every episode of blood-letting makes one wonder if they enjoy the tacit support of certain powerful elements in the government and the security establishment. After all, telephone calls can be easily traced and recorded these days.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been in existence for long. Its leaders openly preach hatred against Shias and other religious minorities in Pakistan without any fear, much less compunction. Hundreds of Shias have been butchered this year alone, with the government making only a few token arrests and generally stumbling along until another tragedy strikes.
Saturday’s attacks came just hours after a national monument linked to Pakistan’s founding father Mohamed Ali Jinnah was destroyed by separatist militants in Ziarat town, 80 kilometres from Quetta, Balochistan’s capital city which saw the country’s two bloodiest attacks so far this year.
A giant bomb planted in a water tanker killed 90 Shia Hazaras in February, while another suicide bombing at a snooker club in January killed 92 others. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is said to be behind those attacks too.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, is rife with militancy and a regional insurgency waged by separatists demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.
The recent upsurge of violence, however, should not be confused with the insurgency. Instead, it is based on the pompous assumption that a certain section of the population is inferior because of their religious beliefs and therefore deserve to be exterminated.