The terrorists struck again not once but four times in less than a month and mostly achieved their objectives by causing fear among the people and making the government appear helpless in the face of their relentless bombing campaign.

More importantly, the terrorist attacks triggered a contentious debate about the effectiveness of the military operations that were supposed to have broken the back of the militants. Questions were also asked about the commitment of the government to implement the 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) to tackle extremism and militancy.

And as intended by the terrorists, attacks like the one on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda claimed by Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants fuelled verbal sparring between Islamabad and Kabul and widened their existing distrust.

The new wave of terrorism hit Pakistan just when the people were feeling relaxed due to the improved security situation. It began on December 29, 2015 when several months of quiet due to relative peace and tranquility was broken by a suicide bombing, targeting the offices of NADRA in Mardan. The blast killed 27 people, mostly young men standing in a queue to apply for computerised national identity cards, and injured another 70. The lone security guard, Pervez Khan, sacrificed his life to keep the bomber from entering the office as otherwise the death toll would have been much higher.

The terrorist attack in Mardan raised questions about the security measures taken by the government to protect its own offices, what to speak of the citizens. There is, no doubt, the militants have been evicted from their strongholds in the tribal areas due to sustained military operations, but it is also a fact that most survived and managed to escape to Afghanistan and are now hurling threats at Pakistan almost on a daily basis.

The next terrorist attack took place in Quetta on January 13 and killed 15 persons, including 12 policemen, one paramilitary soldier, and two civilians. It targeted the security personnel outside a polio vaccination centre in the Satellite Town when they were waiting to escort teams leaving for different localities to administer anti-polio drops to children.

On January 19, a suicide bomber attacked the government’s Khasadar tribal force in Jamrud near the boundary between the Khyber Agency, which is a tribal region, and Peshawar district, a settled area. He killed 13 people, mostly Khasadars headed by Line Officer Nawab Shah along with journalist Mahboob Shah Afridi. Four year old Shahzeb Afridi, too, was killed along with his poor parents, who had come to Peshawar from their native Bara to withdraw the money that had been transferred to their bank account under the Benazir Income Support Programme.

The next day the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda was attacked by four militants, who randomly shot dead 21 innocent people, mostly male students along with a teacher, a librarian, and a few low-grade employees. This attack was publicised, debated and mourned the most because young students were mercilessly slain. It revived memories of the December 16, 2014 terrorist assault on the Army Public School, Peshawar in which 147 persons, including 122 schoolchildren, were martyred.

Though the attack’s mastermind, Aurangzeb aka Khalifa Omar Mansoor, in a video-tape justified the assault on the university because it was a centre of secular education, the selection of the target also had to do something with the person after whom it was named. The Bacha Khan University is named after the revered, Charsadda-born freedom fighter Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was a practitioner of non-violence and was affectionately called Bacha Khan by his Pashtun followers. The timing of the attack coincided with the 28^th death anniversary of Bacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988 and was buried according to his will in Jalalabad in Afghanistan.

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The uptake in the terrorist acts also saw a rise in targeted killings of policemen by motor-cycle-riding militants in Peshawar, Quetta and elsewhere. A support network of pro-militants facilitators has been abetting such attack. The role of facilitators was for the first time highlighted on a wide scale after the attack on the Bacha Khan University when Lt Gen Asim Bajwa claimed the arrest of four men and said three others, including two women who smuggled arms purchased in the gun-manufacturing town of Darra Adamkhel, were being tracked down.

It isn’t the first time that facilitators helped organise an attack as they have been playing a role in almost every terrorist attack by arranging finances, arms and explosives, safe-houses, and transport for the attackers.

Almost every terrorist attack nowadays is being claimed by Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants. Earlier, Fata in general and the two Waziristans in particular were seen as sanctuaries of local and foreign militants, but the military operations forced most of them to shift to Afghanistan to establish their hideouts due to the weak writ of the Afghan government.

The responsibility for some attacks was claimed by the mainstream Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) led by Maulana Fazlullah, who last year added Khorasani to his name, and the splinter group, Jamaatul Ahrar, headed by Omar Khalid Khorasani. Most attacks were organised by the TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, who seems to have drifted away from Fazlullah as the latter through his spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani, denied involvement in the assault on Bacha Khan University and even pledged to bring to justice the perpetrators of this ‘un-Islamic’ act.

Omar Mansoor, however, not only claimed responsibility for the attack but threatened more against the political leadership promoting democracy and the proponents of secular education. His twisted logic was that the educational institutions were producing secular elite who in time would take the Pakistani state away from Islam and strengthen the ‘un-Islamic’ democratic system in the country.

Despite losing their strongholds in the tribal areas as a result of the military action against them, the TTP and other groups didn’t lose many fighters as they escaped before the launching of Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan and other operations. They continue to recruit fighters and send them on suicide missions to hit targets of their choice and at the time of their choosing. They have been attacking both hard and soft targets, though the assaults on vulnerable schools and universities show that the masterminds of these attacks now prefer softer objects that are easier to hit and still make headlines.

Though the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s allegation that the masterminds of the Bacha Khan University attack were based in Afghanistan, Islamabad provided evidence to support its claim, lodged formal protest with Kabul and asked the US to use drones to target Fazlullah and others using Afghanistan’s soil to undertake attacks in Pakistan.

Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, had conceded in his December 9 speech during the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad that Fazlullah was hiding in Afghanistan and about 40 military actions had been taken by Afghan security forces to kill or capture him and his men. His admission had angered his intelligence chief, General Rahmatullah Nabeel, who resigned after publicly launching an unprecedented and scathing attack on President Ghani.

The blame-game between Islamabad and Kabul for sheltering their enemies has continued for years due to their huge distrust. Kabul has been demanding action by Islamabad against the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network members based in Pakistan. Islamabad has been alleging that Kabul has done little to target the Pakistani militants’ sanctuaries in eastern Afghanistan.

Despite scores of visits and numerous public pledges of cooperation to fight terrorism, few practical steps have been taken to jointly tackle the threat. The blame-game could also affect the chances of success of their new peace initiative along with China and the US to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiation table for ending the Afghan conflict.