YET more carnage has visited Kohat district where a suicide bomber killed at least 40 people in a bazaar on Friday. The victims were mostly Shia. Meanwhile in Hangu district, which borders Orakzai and Kohat, the district nazim and head of an aman committee trying to broker peace between Sunnis and Shias was also killed on Friday. Together the attacks are another grim marker in the long-running feud between militant Sunnis and Shias in the area. But there is more. A hitherto unknown faction of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Al Almi, has claimed responsibility for the bombing in Kohat and, perhaps unsurprisingly to knowledgeable observers, the call was placed from a public call office in North Waziristan. The caller apparently spoke fluent Urdu, adding weight to the argument that the Waziristan agencies have become a haven for militants from south Punjab. So what we appear to have are sectarian attacks being launched inside Pakistan from a base in the tribal belt by groups that are not indigenous to those areas.

Which raises the question, is the state's strategy — or what is known of that strategy — against militancy in Waziristan on the right course? At the moment, it appears the state is making two demands of the Waziristan tribes root out the foreigners and Al Qaeda types living in their midst and stop their fellow tribesmen from attacking targets, particularly sec- urity targets, inside Pak- istan. But it is increasingly clear that the south Punjab militant nexus is a growing presence in the Waziristan agencies and that they may be providing the manpower to execute attacks on behalf of other networks in addition to continuing their own 'jihad' against Shias inside Pakistan. So whatever the successes against the Al Qaeda and tribal networks, and there have been significant ones, a third emerging monster appears to be escaping the state's attention for now. That must change.

The state's patchy record against militancy has certainly improved over the last year, but there is a lingering suspicion that the state only acts when a crisis has peaked and its effects become unbearable. Baitullah Mehsud, Fazlullah, the foreigners and Al Qaeda elements in Fata — each has been attacked or weakened after they had grown in strength and could project their power outside their originally small bases. We cannot afford a repeat with the south Punjab militants setting up a base in the Waziristan agencies. They must be tackled directly as well as indirectly with the help of the local tribes. And they must be tackled now, before the country is sucked into the next vortex of violence.