New Delhi: After almost 3,000 people were killed on 11 September 2001, then US President George W. Bush told world leaders that they were either with or against terrorists. Pakistan, a country riven by competing impulses in a violent corner of the globe, has remained a bit of both. The storming of a school in Pakistan’s northwest city of Peshawar on Tuesday, in which Taliban gunmen murdered 141 people, including 132 children, made clear the high price of that bargain to the country itself. “This is a decisive moment in the fight against terrorism,” Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif told reporters in Peshawar. “The people of Pakistan should unite in this fight. Our resolve will not be weakened by these attacks.” It is far from clear, though, whether the gruesome attack will be something like a 9/11 for Pakistan, where the Taliban are seen as a legitimate counterweight to US interests.
Why Peshawar school attack might not change Pakistan terrorism policy
Sameer Patil, Associate Fellow, National Security, Ethnic Conflict and Terrorism, Gateway House has been quoted in an article on the massacre of the children in Pakistan. This article has been published by Live Mint