Blaming Foreign Hands, Arresting Pakistanis

Investigation are beginning to result in hard evidence about Bacha Khan University attack, and a familiar picture is emerging. Hawaldar media went into over drive to spread the story that India was behind the deadly terrorist attack. Foreign Office summoned Afghan envoy to register concerns about terrorists crossing the border into Pakistan. If terrorism is a foreign problem, though, why are so many Pakistanis involved?

Army already announced arrest of five facilitators, and now ‘Terrorist A’ has been arrested as well. Once again, he is not a foreign national and he identified other the terrorists who were also Pakistani.

According to the sources, the suspect said he had brought with him two attackers while the other two were already with another facilitator, Riaz, in Charsadda. He identified the four attackers, including an Afridi, one from Orakzai, one from Swat and one from South Waziristan.

This complicates our complaint to Afghanistan about terrorists crossing into Pakistan because it means that even when terrorists are training and coordinating in Afghan camps, they are first traveling to those camps from Pakistan. In other words they are crossing Pakistan border into Afghanistan first!

There are two important conclusions. First is that we need to stop blaming foreigners for trying to destabilize the country and try to figure out why so many Pakistanis are working to destabilize and terrorize their own country. Obviously something is terribly wrong and if we continue to ignore it it will only grow worse.

Second is that before we complain to Afghanistan about securing the border on their side we need to secure the border on our side to prevent militants from traveling into Afghanistan. Yes, that means that we can no longer turn a blind eye to militants who want to join the Afghan jihad, but we can no longer pretend that it is a one-way door. The price is too high.