Dear Sir,
Through your esteemed online news and views service, I wish to express my appreciation of the decision of Pakistan Army to launch country wide operation against terrorism by the name of ‘Radul Fasad’.

First of all the name of the operation is very appropriate and easy to understand. Having said that, such operations have also been launched in the past and operation Zarbe Azab being a recent example which quelled terrorism for sometime but could not eliminate it, as it did not address the root cause of terrorism in Pakistan.

For making operation ‘Radul Fasad’ a success, I suggest that it should start with making it compulsory for all Imams of Mosques to publicly denounce terrorism in the name of Islam in their Friday prayer sermons. Any Imam not doing so should be considered a facilitator of terrorism. This one step alone will be more effective than randomly throwing a thousand bombs on terrorist abodes or summoning Afghan ambassador and warning him etc etc. All superficial measures result in superficial results.

If Pakistan Army is sincere in eliminating terrorism it must attack extremism and instead of spending billions on using arms and ammunition it should spend a part of this money to engage (if need be, hire)  Religious leaders who can effectively counter the narrative of terrorism and present the true narrative of Islam where peace, tolerance and coexistence is the hallmark. It is also imperative that the army addresses social injustice in the country which leads to youth getting fed up with this world and prefer to commit suicide attack in revenge against blatant injustice, as they see no hope in this society. — Izharul Haq, Chitral 23 Feb 2017