THE lifting of the moratorium on the death penalty in response to the Peshawar carnage has triggered a serious threat: terrorist attacks to avenge the executions by the state.

Already, intelligence agencies are issuing all manner of warnings to possible targets, especially state institutions and security installations across the country, and many educational institutes, including in the federal capital, have closed their campuses indefinitely ahead of the scheduled winter break.

Pakistan is bracing for a backlash. This is the moment in which the performance and capabilities of the intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus across the country will be assessed. Failure could have catastrophic consequences, not just in terms of lives lost and individuals injured but also in terms of the state’s very ability to fight terrorism and militancy in all its manifestations.

Also read: Sympathisers, supporters of terrorists live among us: Nisar

For, a wave of successful attacks in response to state execution of militants could leave the resolve to fight terrorism in tatters, especially if the forces on the frontline are left exposed and vulnerable.

To be sure, in this long fight against militancy, there will be more suffering inflicted on the country. Given the willingness of the militants to attack virtually any target, hard or soft, and the reality that militants are embedded across the country, the possibility of more terrorist attacks is high.

But there is, or ought to be at least, a difference between the unexpected attack, the one that slipped through the cracks in the system, and attacks in major cities at a time when the country’s security apparatus is in a state of high alert and mobilised essentially on a war footing.

Yesterday, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan gave his frankest assessment yet of the scale and size of the militancy problem in the country. But it is not enough to call on the citizenry to act as eyes and ears on the ground against militancy.

What is the government doing about the militant supporters and sympathisers within the state machinery? Time and again, the infiltration by militant groups into law-enforcement agencies and even the intelligence apparatus briefly emerges as a topic of debate at the national level before being quietly pushed into the background again. Beyond that, where is the public investigation into lapses that have made militant attacks possible and where is the accountability of those who are found to have failed in their jobs?

No system anywhere can improve if there is no transparency and accountability. In essence, it is about disrupting the militants’ tactics and plans. Studying past attacks and disseminating knowledge within the security apparatus about how attacks are carried out help prevent future attacks — but only if the state is willing to adapt and learn itself.

Published in Dawn, December 22th, 2014