The brazen attack in the District Courts in Islamabad puts into stark perspective the almost non-existent security arrangements in and outside most court buildings in Pakistan. Such attacks underscore the reality that it is not a question of ‘if’ a particular building in Pakistan can be attacked -- but a question of ‘when’.

Among those who tragically perished in the Islamabad attacks was Fiza Malik -- a young lawyer who deserved much better from life and from the state. Every day I see dozens of 20-something first-generation lawyers like her trying to make it in a highly competitive industry. These young people bank on their ability, the promise of hard work and the basic assumption of physical security when entering the legal industry. Their state is not strong enough to protect its citizens from the menace of terrorism.  The sooner our government stops lying about this, the better.

Asking people to open car trunks before entering a building is merely cosmetic. It is a façade. It is incumbent upon the state to be honest with its people. The people of Pakistan need to be told that we are up against an enemy that is highly trained and entrenched in our midst. And more importantly that we are in this for the long haul. Pretending that we have things under control is an abuse of the trust that the government demands of us.

Add to this the insult of the Interior Minister now treating the TTP like an arm of the state by calling on them to help with the investigation. Is the Interior Minister thinking he is actually capable of arousing some civic sense in terrorists? Why is the Federal Government going out of its way to lend legitimacy, moral and political, to an organisation which has as its avowed aim the destruction of the state?

It is disingenuous for the government to even claim that this menace can be controlled any time soon. The rampant talk of new highly trained forces is mere eye-wash. Training a few hundred men never eliminates terrorism -- countering the root causes does. We have the example of the Elite Force that was supposedly an anti-terror force and now its principal duty is to protect the VIPs. There is nothing inherently wrong with protecting state officials but the fact that the government pretends that any new force would somehow make the ordinary hard working people more secure is the repulsive bit.

The state of Pakistan lacks the monetary capacity as well as the political will to take on the menace of terrorism as an existential threat. Add to this the complete lack of necessary infrastructure to deal with the problem of hatred being propagated through formal and informal schooling. The desire of the PML-N government to negotiate with the TTP is a step that places re-election over and above the long-term security of the state of Pakistan.

Happiness here is fleeting and we are taking every possible step to make sure it is short-lived. Fiza and others like her must have rejoiced on the 4th of March with Afridi’s towering sixes and the win against India. The crack of bullets the next morning and the streams of blood in Islamabad brought home the reality that happiness at a collective level is preciously scarce here.

Life is meant to be finite I suppose. But one should not constantly have to ask the question, "is this the last time I am safe in this place?" And I cannot shake that question every time I go to the courts now. I am sure millions of other Pakistanis in other cities have asked themselves the same question every day.

The fact that elements that sponsored establishments such as the Lal Masjid continue to thrive in the capital while breeding hate and fear speaks volumes about the perennial insecurity that lies at the center of our existence.

The least that we can do to honour all those who have departed in this struggle against terrorism is be honest with our people. The government needs to stop looking for excuses. Government spokesmen sound like uncles breeding conspiracy theories blaming unnamed and ‘foreign’ elements for sabotaging the talks with the TTP. Such discourse paints the TTP as a benevolent force and, without realising it the government eliminates its own legitimacy with each such sentence.

Each day we are inching closer to inviting our own collapse -- a collapse that will be so complete that it will be hard to fathom for many how we actually got here.