World community concerned over Pakistan's terror spurt

The world community expressed concern over the raging domestic turmoil in Pakistan and renewed spurt in violence.

According to the International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS), the domestic turmoil in Pakistan has shown no sign of ending and has diverted the government's already-wavering focus on terrorism.

IFFRAS is a non-profit, independent, and international think tank headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Earlier, the United Nations has expressed concern at prospects of a rise in terrorism, while the United States has promised 'solidarity' and help, even as the Pakistan-Afghan region's tribal areas tremble at the offensive by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) with violence, aided by the spread of the Islamic State (Da'esh).

This came after the TTP cancelled its cease-fire pact with the Pakistan government on November 28. According to the TTP statement, they called off the ceasefire agreed with the government in June, reported Dawn.

TTP, a separate entity from the Taliban in Afghanistan but sharing a similar Islamist ideology, has been responsible for hundreds of attacks and deaths since emerging in 2007.

On December 1, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said that while the rise in terror incidents was alarming, it would not get "out of control," a think tank reported.

Instead of dealing with the TTP, he was for the past many weeks busy with managing law and order on former prime minister Imran Khan's Long March for which thousands moved from Lahore to Islamabad.

The army did much of the fighting against the TTP, but that too was battling controversy and open criticism of its top brass, till the all-powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, retired on November 29. The cancellation of the cease-fire prompted Islamabad to act, but inexplicably, with 'soft' diplomacy of rushing its junior foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, to Kabul, when the senior, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was available at hand, according to a think tank.

Incidentally, PTI Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhary on Thursday lashed out at the coalition government of Shehbaz Sharif and claimed that there has been a 52 per cent rise in terror attacks since the regime changed.

Fawad said that terrorism incidents in the country had increased by 52 per cent since "Operation Regime Change", a euphemism his party uses to refer to the ouster of its government through a no-trust vote in April, reported Dawn.

Expressing grief over the loss of precious lives in November's suicide attack near Quetta, he said the operation regime change had been carried out to topple "a well-performing PTI government" and replace it with an "imported inept government".