A TRIBUTE is owed to the Rawalpindi policeman who was killed as he attempted to tackle a suicide bomber at the entrance of an imambargah where some 700 people were present. His presence of mind is in contrast to the skills of the security agencies that had some weeks ago on Ashura failed to foresee the communal attack on a madressah in the same city. The fact that Tuesday’s suicide bombing occurred close to Nur Khan base in a high-security zone of the garrison town which houses GHQ further exposes the flaws inherent in the security and intelligence apparatus. And that a bomber and his handlers should have felt confident enough to penetrate the security cover with the intention to kill and maim does little to instil confidence in the state’s ability to protect. We have a plethora of intelligence agencies, but regrettably they have failed to do their job. Militant organisations operate all over the country. They have training bases and funding and information-gathering mechanisms and are often a few steps ahead of the state’s counterintelligence efforts. This is true not just of the Taliban and their religiously motivated affiliates but also of other militants such as those active in Balochistan, not to speak of the criminals operating in Karachi’s underworld. The most glaring intelligence failure, of course, concerned Osama bin Laden whose hideout was within the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad.

We don’t dispute that there have been successes, such as the arrest of Mullah Baradar and other high-profile figures. But the very fact that militants can strike almost at will across the country shows the state’s ineffectiveness. Developed countries have their own terrorism concerns, but they have in most cases succeeded in giving security to their people by having foolproof cyber-age intelligence systems. It is time that Pakistan’s various security and intelligence outfits too coordinated their efforts to stall what has become an increasingly bloody trend.