The political scenery in Pakistan is pretty much wayward. The Punjab government is trying to make the right sounds but its ruling coalition ally, the Pakistan People’s Party, the second largest party in parliament of Pakistan’s largest province, for its part too has maintained a criminal silence on the matter after the issuance of a cursory initial statement calling for a negotiated settlement of the restive situation in the tribal region and in the settled areas of the other province.
Yes, they have to focus more on the provincial matters but the thing is that the main target of suicide bombers is the Punjab province and the government has to pay attention there. It seems that barring the fate of Justice Iftikhar, the PPP has become oblivious to the fate of everything else, including the territorial integrity of Pakistan.
It’s not the time when these politicos have to play idiotic and uncalled for political games. Real issues warrant real solutions and it shall prove fatal for us to treat FATA as a regional issue because it is a national crisis of the gravest proportion. But does anyone in Governor House Lahore really care?
Driving around the Khyber Agency (and it’s the same in all the Fata agencies) you can’t help notice startling contrasts: a total absence of state-sponsored development work, the overbearing presence of abject poverty; total absence of the traditional law, the presence of the all new militant imposed suffocating order; fading images of the traditional genuine religious conservatism, the glaring new in-your-face brand of militant religiosity.
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