NOBODY has claimed responsibility for Friday’s bombing of two mosques in the Malakand Agency but the fingerprints are those of the militants waging war on the state of Pakistan: to them, nothing is sacred. They have bombed schools, mosques, Eid congregations, hospitals, religious processions, peace ‘jirgas’, funerals and bazaars full of men, women and children. To them, the over 20 people killed on Friday will merely add to lifeless statistics — some 50,000 Pakistanis killed or injured, 4,000 of them being soldiers. The Malakand area has a heavy military presence, and that’s the reason why the militants — whatever faction they belonged to — targeted the two mosques. Even though the Pakistani Taliban had stepped up their murder of political workers by bombing party rallies and corner meetings during the election campaign, this is the first time they have carried out a major attack in the Malakand region after the May 11 election. Is this a foretaste of things to come? Will the Taliban and other militant organisations continue to shed blood, or will they relent, because the three main parties which were spared during the campaign will soon be in the driving seat?

Given the party’s landslide in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the PTI is likely to form government in KP. Its possible coalition partners had all along pursued a policy that seemed to ignore if not condone terrorism and tried to present it as an inevitable consequence of America’s drone attacks. Now that the KP people have voted for his party, will Imran Khan and his would-be coalition partners take a clear-cut stance on terrorism? The drone attacks are a gross violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, but can the attacks by a foreign country’s unmanned aerial vehicles justify the spilling of blood of Pakistanis by their own people?