THE threat had never quite receded and now may be on the verge of exploding. Serious, urgent and unified action is needed by the state, the political class and society. Ahsan Iqbal, federal interior minister, has mercifully survived an assassination attempt in Narowal. The suspect is in police custody and has been declared to be a supporter of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan, a fringe group that has catapulted itself to the centre of the national consciousness through extremist politics. It is necessary to question how a man with a gun was able to come within shooting distance of the interior minister, the top civilian law-enforcement official in the country, because while election campaigns must necessarily be relatively open, senior government officials ought to have reliable security. It was not a PML-N politician who was shot and injured on Sunday; it was the serving federal interior minister. The tragic assassination of Salmaan Taseer, then governor of Punjab, ought to have been the last time a catastrophic security failure occurred. There must be accountability.

The attempted assassination of Mr Iqbal has dire implications for the upcoming election and for public safety generally. The TLP is one of many groups actively promoting intolerance and religious hatred in the country, but the politics of this organisation are particularly dangerous for national peace and cohesion. Once the controversy stirred after the overhaul of the election laws had been resolved inside parliament, the government ought to have handled the protests and the Faizabad sit-in by the TLP decisively. Whatever the suspicions created by the chaotic and catastrophic end to the protest in Faizabad, the PML-N governments in Punjab and Islamabad appear to have been paralysed from the time the protesters set off in Lahore until close to the end. Then, when action was finally ordered by the centre and supervised by the interior minister, removing the violent protesters from Faizabad was a poorly executed operation. Incompetence allowed for total capitulation to be engineered.

Yet, there is more at stake here than just the incompetence of some in government and the cravenness of the state when challenged by religious bigots and demagogues. The flames of hatred stoked by the TLP and sundry groups to engulf the political process, the upcoming election and the country itself, can spread quicker than wildfire and may be impossible to stamp out. Faizabad was a disaster and lessons should have been immediately learned. It is not clear why the TLP’s status as a registered political party has not been re-evaluated, the group’s leadership has not been investigated for violating anti-extremism laws and the national leadership has not worked out a plan to mitigate violence in the upcoming election campaign. Democracy is under attack, the national fabric is being torn apart and the country’s leadership is preoccupied with power struggles. Pakistan needs and deserves better.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2018