There is blood in Quetta church

There was blood again in Quetta – this time in a church ahead of Christmas. 

By the time, this piece was being written, nine had been killed and over 30 injured in, what police said, a botched suicide attack on the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church on Quetta's Zarghoon Road. 

More causalities are expected in the days to come which will go unreported because of the media’s obsession with politics and their tendency not to do any follow-up of the cases. 

The law enforcers will soon forget the case. 

They have a huge backlog of cases to solve. 

They say two suicide bombers tried to breach the security of the church, which was in service at that time and around 400 people in the church, a place of worship when the guards and police officials deployed there challenged them. We hear the church has been targeted earlier too.  

Balochistan often hits the headline because of a bloodbath. This time, the killers spilled the blood of Christians; earlier, the blood of police officials, paramilitary personnel, Hazara people, laborers workers on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Punjabi settlers have spilled on several occasion. A police officer with his family – his wife, son, and granddaughter - was shot at and killed in a targeted killing whereas one onlooker was also injured, for being at a wrong place at the wrong time in the gun attack in Nawan Killi area.

Not long ago, police were in the mourning, when a blast killed a DIG and two others in the same bloodied city. Police officers, who are supposed to protect others, have been the targets of blood-thirsty assailants, what to say of the laborers working on a CPEC projects who were killed in a duck shooting in Kech district on Wednesday. Levies found bullet-riddled bodies. According to a source, as per DawnNews report, the deceased were from Punjab and working on a CEPC project. In earlier weeks, Hazara people were gunned down. 

As is the norm, a high-level crackdown ensues whenever there is a high profile murder in a targeted killing, government functionaries religiously followed the rituals and vowed to arrest the murderer of police officers.  

Balochistan kept on wearing an impatient calm when there was a wave of death and destruction in tribal areas and targeted suicide bombing across the country from 2001 till 2013. When military operation Zarb Azab claimed peace in most of the parts of the country, Balochistan erupted with sectarian and terrorist violence. There have been attacks on CPEC projects, shrines, religious congregation, political leadership and the common man.

It seems Balochistan is under attack from dissidents and terrorists. The government needs to take up a two-pronged strategy to deal with the violence in Balochistan – talks with Baloch leaders and action against Taliban and religious extremists.

Baloch nationalist leaders and workers have been pushed to the wall by the state for their political demands. The demands included provincial autonomy and less and less interference in the federal government. The government, however, answered their demands with the assassination of Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in an army operation. Several Baloch leaders were hounded, harassed and killed. Now, several Balochs have been under exile, waging their struggle against the government and the establishment. The government has, several times, extended them offers for talks, but in vain. They will (or should) come to the dialogue table as the confrontation or guerilla warfare will not land them victory against an organized, disciplined Pakistan Army.