It’s amazing how quickly the October 24 attack on the police training centre in Quetta was forgotten. On the media’s clock, it lasted less than a day perhaps. Comparatively, and a little callously too, the August 8 attack that wiped out the leading lawyers of the city was lamented a lot more than this.

It’s amazing that the discussion about a bleeding city is all about how long we have grieved over it -- and not about how to make the city secure for its people and also for the country at large.

To Quetta, therefore, we must return, a city that is experiencing sustained violence for quite a few years. The circus in Islamabad must be left aside. The focus must shift to Quetta.

In a parliamentary speech after the August 8 attack, MNA Mahmood Khan Achakzai had said that Quetta is too small a city to stay so insecure. In today’s Special Report, we want to see how easy or difficult it exactly is to make Quetta safe. What are the vulnerabilities, the sources of violence?

Of course, it is difficult to separate the city from the province, from the country and from the neighbouring countries too. Isn’t the failure in Quetta a reflection of the failure of our foreign policy too?

Quetta’s pains call for immediate attention from all quarters, including the media which has consistently ignored both the city and the province. Quetta is alone. It should not be.

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