Taliban send message of impunity

As grieving Pakistani parents lament the government's failure to keep their children safe, analysts say the Taliban have sent a message with their latest campus massacre -- a national crackdown on extremism has failed and they can hit targets at will.

The rampage at Bacha Khan university left 21 people dead Wednesday and shattered the sense of security growing in the troubled northwest, a year after Pakistan's deadliest ever extremist attack, a 2014 assault on a school in nearby Peshawar.

The chilling similarities between the two atrocities starkly underscored the failings of a government- and military-led initiative launched in the wake of the strike on the army-run school.

"It happened again," said Zaheeruddin, father of Kashan Zaheer, a ninth grade student who was wounded in the assault which saw Taliban gunmen storm the Peshawar school and kill more than 150 people, most of them children, a year ago.

"Staff and students were martyred again. The government has failed. It has not been able to provide us security."

The Peshawar attack, carried out by the same Taliban faction that claimed the latest strike in nearby Charsadda, prompted the military to intensify an offensive in tribal areas where jihadists had operated with impunity.

The military says it has killed thousands in the campaign and swept others over the porous border into Afghanistan.

The government launched a much-vaunted National Action Plan to combat extremism, including the creation of military courts and the resumption of executions after a six-year moratorium.

Together the initiatives are credited with making 2015 the least deadly in terms of militant attacks since the formation of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP) in 2007.

But the Bacha Khan attack was a message, said Peshawar-based senior analyst and retired brigadier Saad Khan -- that despite the pressure "they can hit any target".

Among the criticism is that little has been done about key issues including oversight of Pakistan's thousands of Islamic seminaries, widely seen as breeding grounds for intolerance.

Relatives mourn the death of a victim. Pakistan observed a day of national mourning yesterday for the 21 people killed when heavily-armed gunmen stormed the university in the troubled northwest, exposing the failings in a national crackdown on extremism. Photo: AFP

The resumption of hangings has been particularly controversial, with rights activists saying that the majority of the more than 300 people executed in the past year were not linked to extremism. And observers such as the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies argue that execution is no deterrent for militants who are already prepared to die for their cause.

For those who survived the 2014 attack, described as Pakistan's 9/11 for the way it united the country in shock and outrage, "sequels" such as Wednesday's university assault are making their courage waver.