Pak Govt, Army should have alerted people about gamut of terror threat: Edit

ISLAMABAD - While people of Pakistan deserve unmitigated praise for exhibition of immense courage during a spate of terrorists attacks, the country’s government and army should have provided them with more: the gamut of threats to state, according to The Dawn.

Before gallantly launching a war against militancy, the government should have clearly told its people that state security and the public’s safety was at stake.

It took many bloody lessons for Pakistanis to know about the TTP, its key leaders, its agenda and its range of operations, the paper says.

A number of questions is still puzzling Pakistanis: What has the Pakistan Army or the government told the public about these threats? Who are the leaders of these groups? How large are their cadres, in the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands? Where do they operate? What is their agenda?

“But what the public cannot do is turn against what it does not know about. The failure of the state to come clean about the hydra-headed militancy threat means that many groups have been able to live, perhaps even thrive, alongside the population,” the editorial says.

“It is striking that the average Pakistani with access to the news media or the Internet knows, or thinks he knows, more about Blackwater and RAW’s activities inside Pakistan than, for xample, who leads Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and what its foot soldiers are up to,” it added

Pakistanis have conclusively demonstrated that they reject terror; it is time the state came clean about the full spectrum of the threat, the paper concludes. (ANI)