Once again the terrorists have struck the worshippers in mosques during prayers. This time their targets were the mosques in Darra Adamkhel and Peshawar. The casualty toll included over one hundred dead and another one hundred injured. Of course, the brutal terrorist attacks, which targeted innocent civilians, deserve the utmost condemnation and those responsible for organising them need to be given exemplary punishment. The fact that the attack on the mosque at Darra Adamkhel last week may have been prompted by tribal rivalries does not make it any less reprehensible. Such terrorist attacks are usually followed by condemnation by our authorities, especially by our Interior Minister. The people are assured of strong action against the culprits and foolproof measures to prevent their recurrence. There is calm for a few days until another terrorist attack in another part of the country takes its toll to be followed by the ritual condemnation and promises of effective action against the terrorists. This sickening cycle of insane brutality from one side and empty promises from the other presents the picture of a government, which has failed in its primary function of maintaining law and order in the country and providing security to its citizens. Terrorism was virtually unheard of in Pakistan until 1980s when it raised its ugly head. Undoubtedly, the scourge of terrorism was linked to the wave of extremism, which spread in the country as a direct result of Ziaul Haqs exploitation of the name of Islam for prolonging his rule and an indirect outcome of his policy of support to the jihad of the Afghan people for the liberation of their homeland from the Soviet occupation. This should not be interpreted as a criticism of the policy of support to the Afghan jihad, which has become fashionable among Pakistans liberal circles. Zia was, indeed, a usurper, besides being guilty of the heinous crime of hanging a democratically-elected Prime Minister for which he deserves condemnation. He also used Islam for his nefarious political ends. But the support to the Afghan jihad was a strategic necessity for us because of the serious threat that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan pos-ed to Pakistans security. The Soviet move was like a pincer manoeuvre against Pakistan taking into account the history of bitter Pakistan-India relations and Indias strategic partnership with Moscow. The problem of terrorism became a serious issue in the aftermath of the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan because Zias successors on the military and civil sides failed to adopt the policies required for countering the negative effects of the pro-Afghan jihad policy of the Zia era, which had fuelled the fires of extremism in the country. The situation called for the promotion of religious moderation and tolerance, as well as the disbandment of or, at least, strict control over jihadi organisations. This was not done. Further, the army became virtually autonomous in the conduct of our Kashmir and Afghan policies, which had grave adverse implications for Pakistans domestic situation. The immediate result of this mismanagement was the sectarian terrorism of the 1990s, which led to the loss of thousands of innocent lives and attacks on worshipping places on both sides. It took the nation and our leadership quite some time to come to grips with this problem. Meanwhile, the seeds of a more serious problem were being sown through the flawed Afghan policy that we followed after the fall of the Najibullah government in Afghanistan in April 1992. Ideally, we should have kept out of the civil war that commenced in Afghanistan after Najibulah was overthrown. Instead, in pursuit of our legitimate desire to have friendly relations with Afghanistan, we became a partisan in the Afghan civil war. Unfortunately, so also did Iran, India and Russia. Our pro-Taliban policy followed from 1995 to 9/11, for which primarily our military establishment must be held responsible, proved to be a strategic disaster of the highest order. Besides alienating us from the non-Pashtun communities in Afghanistan and isolating us internationally, it aggravated the extremist tendencies in the country and brutalised our society by promoting the Kalashnikov culture. Above all, it indirectly provided ingress to Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and our tribal areas leading ultimately to 9/11. The rest is history. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 led to the US pressure on us to change our pro-Taliban policy. Instead of being the supporters of the Taliban, we became a party to the US war against them by providing logistic facilities to the US. The volte-face in our Afghanistan policy and our willingness to oblige the Americans by using force against our own citizens in the tribal areas are the main, but not the exclusive, causes for the spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan by the supporters of the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan. Thus, the US attempt to foist a government of its own choice on the people of Afghanistan has not only fuelled the armed conflict in Afghanistan, but also desta-bilised Pakistan, especially its tribal areas. This is not to deny that a residual problem of terrorism is caused in Pakistan by the misguided attempt on the part of some extremist elements to impose their retrogressive interpretation of Islam on the rest of the country through the use of arms. This is, of course, totally unacceptable. They should be engaged through dialogue to dissuade them from the use of arms to force their views on others. If they pay heed to this advice, well and good. If they reject this advice as they did in Swat, they should be made to see reason through the judicious use of force by the government. The need of the hour is for the government to adopt a multi-pronged strategy in fighting the menace of terrorism. The strategy will necessarily have internal and external dimensions. Internally, dialogue and use of force will have to be the essential elements of this strategy. Dialogue should be used preferably to dismantle the structure of terrorism and stop terrorist attacks, while force must be used where necessary for these purposes. Our intelligence agencies should be given the task of infiltrating and neutralising the terrorist cells in various parts of the country, as well as of providing advance concrete and precise information about planned terrorist attacks to the law enforcement authorities to enable them to take the required preventive measures. So far, the performance of our intelligence agencies in this regard has been a miserable failure. Development activities, especially in our tribal areas, and the promotion of religious moderation and tolerance, which are the hallmarks of Islamic teachings, through a well-considered programme of education are a must for any anti-terrorism strategy. Finally, the government needs to impress upon the Americans that the restoration of peace and stability in Afghanistan through the establishment of a broad-based government is an indispensable condition for the success of any plan to root out Al-Qaeda and other terrorist elements in Afghanistan and Pakistans tribal areas. The writer is a retired ambassador. E-mail: javid.husain@gmail.com