P AKISTAN is bleeding internally. Its home-grown ills are slowly inflicting untold damage on the country and its civil society even as the political class and the military generals keep themselves engaged in futile battles with their adversaries and harping on their anti-India tirade without any success. In this melee, many innocent lives are being lost to terrorist attacks. The latest in a mosque in the Tarlai area of capital Islamabad has taken 31 lives and left almost 200 injured. Pakistan’s own monster is now gobbling it up at a rapid speed. The attack at a Shia mosque has been claimed by the Islamic State, though the sources have remained unconfirmed. Perpetrators of the attack might soon be found out or some extremist group might own up responsibility of the deadly strike but one thing the blast has yet again established is the utter failure of the Pakistani State in dealing with mushrooming terror groups on its soil.

 

The terrorists who were trained by Pakistan to “bleed India with a thousand cuts” have turned their guns towards their masters. The trainer is getting mauled by the wards each passing day, making mockery of the already failed State. The Islamabad attack is a reminder to the civil and military powers that terror has made deep inroads into its society. The radical plans being hatched by the religious zealots having nexus with the military and political leadership are coming back to haunt Pakistan. Totally clueless at handling this growing menace, Pakistan has once again chosen to delude itself by blaming India for the blast in Islamabad mosque. It is a pathetic excuse to divert attention from its own law and order failures. Blaming India might earn it a few brownie points among the radical sections but the fact is, civil society in Pakistan has moved beyond this hopeless rhetoric chosen by the country’s leadership. India has categorically rejected the laughable charges and has loudly called out the failure of the leaders in addressing problems plaguing its social fabric. It is a fact the leadership in Islamabad and Rawalpindi has refused to accept despite getting whacked by terror groups in several provinces. The harsh truth is, Pakistan has simply lost the plot and is paying for its own sins. The path chosen by its leaders after partition has taken Pakistan to a precipice.

 

By nurturing terrorists and picking terrorism as a State tool, the radical leadership of Gen Ziaul-Haq had already pushed Pakistan into a dark alley. That many of his successors also chose to walk the same path showed that Pakistan had purposefully picked a disastrous future for itself. All the sane voices seeking adherence to democratic values and forging good relations with a developing India have since been silenced through various means. A similar script keeps unfolding in Pakistan in every regime with absolutely no efforts to bring it out from the depths of despair caused by faulty policies. Its sum has come through the oppressed sections resorting to violence to take back their promised rights. Terror keeps hovering over the perennial client State and there seems to light at the end of the tunnel. The Islamabad attack is not the last of the aggression Pakistan has witnessed from extremists. It is a warning of an impending catastrophe for the beleaguered country. The tentacles of terrorism have made inroads from restive border provinces to the heart of Pakistan. A dangerous future awaits the civil society at the behest of a blind leadership.