ISLAMABAD: Describing Pakistan as being in a ‘war zone’, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan promised in the National Assembly on Tuesday that there would be a review of security options and a ‘reaction’ to Sunday night’s deadly terrorist attack at Karachi airport.

Briefing the house about what he called ‘raw courage’ shown by security personnel in their battle with heavily armed militants, in which 29 people were killed from both sides, he also called for patience and a united struggle to face a ‘serious security situation’ facing the country.

“Nobody should be in doubt that there will necessarily be a reaction to the action,” said the minister, who was lambasted overnight by opposition lawmakers in both houses of parliament over perceived security failures that allowed 10 militants to penetrate into the area.

“We are in a war zone,” he said, adding that in “this situation of war”, the whole nation must get united and the media “will also have to assist security agencies”.

We are in a war zone, says Nisar

He accused an unspecified private television news channel of airing stories based on presumptions about the Karachi incident on Monday and called for the media to follow a code of ethics, especially for live coverage.

While calling a national consensus as the need of the hour, he said: “We will have to review our security options anew.”

But he did not talk about the fate of the stalled peace talks with Taliban rebels who have claimed responsibility for the Karachi attack or respond to some opposition lawmakers’ demand that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who did not come to the house for the second day after the Karachi attack, to have another meeting with opposition politicians to brief them about what happened after an ‘all-party conference’ on Sept 9 authorised him to hold peace talks with the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

Pointing out that different political parties headed provincial governments, Chaudhry Nisar said they would have to “agree to a single line of action” for security.

And the minister said he was confident that Pakistan’s political and military leadership had the courage to spare no sacrifice for the sake of Pakistan.

But top lawmakers from the two main opposition parties, while lauding security forces in frustrating militants at the cost of their lives, seemed expressing doubts over the minister’s claims of seeking cooperation of others.

While Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi said it seemed “important institutions of the state are not on the same page”, senior PPP lawmaker Naveed Qamar saw breaches in the federal government’s cooperation with the Sindh government as evident from the minister, while in Karachi on Monday, avoiding meeting Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah.

The house unanimously passed two resolutions, one of them strongly condemning the Karachi attack with assurances of support for security forces and tributes to those who wiped out the attackers and those who laid down their lives, and expressing its grave concern over the seven people found burned to death while being trapped in a cold stage facility at the airport.

The other resolution condemned Sunday night’s attack on two hotels at the Taftan border town in Balochistan that killed 23 Shia pilgrims returning from Iran.

The Karachi attack, which the interior minister said had taken place “not at the Karachi airport but at a terminal of the old airport”, overshadowed the general debate on the government’s new budget – after causing its suspension for the whole sitting on Monday.

Yet opposition leader Khursheed Shah concluded his opening speech, which had been left unfinished on Friday, with strong opposition to the government’s plans to privatise state enterprises but avoiding to talk of a hunger strike he had threatened to begin outside the parliament house to protest against threatened retrenchment of thousands of employees of state institutions reinstated by the previous PPP government.

However, he said his party would stand like an impregnable wall against the privatisation of five enterprises, including Pakistan Petroleum Ltd, Pakistan State Oil and Oil and Gas Development Company.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2014