Heads should roll

Islamabad - How about a thought experiment? Suppose you were the nation's interior and civilian intelligence czar. Suppose you had information that a terrorist attack would take place in the day of the Presidential address.


Suppose your information further added that the point-zero would be near the parliament.


What do you do?


A most obvious response would be to beef up security in the vicinity. Specially, say, at a hotel that terrorists have had a penchant for striking in the past.


The Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs, Mr Rehman Malik, disclosed these bits of information while he was visiting the injured at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences after the terrible blast that rocked the capital yesterday.


But he was quick to offer an explanation: stopping a suicide attacker is very difficult.


True. This is a dark art that has proved infamously difficult to pre-empt.


But what happened yesterday was no cloak-and-dagger stuff. It was not a woman in a burqa perfectly concealing a suicide jacket. It was a Shehzore pick-up carrying over 1000 kgs of explosives.


How this pick-up managed to slip through the net is beyond anyone.


Clearly, there were lapses in security.


Were this any other country, heads would have rolled.


This is a time for introspection in the country's counter-terrorist establishment.