THE modus operandi of the terrorist is flexible. When so-called hard targets become difficult to attack, soft ones are selected. When one area becomes more stable and therefore harder for terrorists to operate in, other, more vulnerable areas are targeted.

The challenge for the state is to not only keep up with the changing ways of the terrorist, but to stay one step ahead of him. When it comes to protecting the judiciary and the wider legal fraternity, however, the state has fallen behind.

Yet another attack on Thursday against the legal community in Quetta, this time a failed assassination attempt on FSC judge Malik Zahoor Ahmed Shahwani, has raised concerns that lawyers and judges may have become a sustained new target.

The devastation in Quetta earlier in the week, the killing of a lawyer in the same city the week before and the month-long abduction of the son of the Sindh High Court chief justice in June suggest an emerging pattern to both threaten the state and terrorise society.

If that is indeed the case — if militants are taking their war to the country’s judicial and legal communities — the benefit to terrorists is relatively clear.

Damaging state institutions, making their members fear for their lives and making it easier for terrorists to operate is a key goal for them. While the state has turned to military courts as a partial response to the militant threat, the criminal justice system remains on the front line in the anti-militancy fight.

The cases of the vast majority of alleged terrorists processed through the judicial system are handled by the civilian-run judiciary. Be it bail, trials or the appeals process, judges and lawyers are deeply involved in the process of bringing them to justice.

By threatening the legal community, then, militants are essentially trying to frighten off an institution whose job it is to bring them to justice. That the individual targets may not all be directly connected to the fight against militancy does not matter. What matters is that fear is being sowed.

But it is far from clear what the state can do to protect the legal fraternity. While security for high-profile targets can be stepped up and the intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus can work with legal communities across the country to improve security, the apparent randomness of the attacks makes it difficult to fight back. But fight back the state must.

The terrorist’s goal is to make the state seem weak. As new threats evolve, the state must adjust its response. Specific ethnicities and religious communities have been targeted before.

The fight against militancy was always going to be a long, difficult one. Neither the state nor society should lose hope though — that being a fundamental aim of the terrorist.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2016