Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani prosecutor working on some high profile terrorism cases, was gunned down by unidentified assailants last week. Cases that Zulfiqar Ali had been working included the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. The suspects for these attacks have been militant Islamist groups including the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (literally, “the holy army”).
So if you are living in Pakistan, prosecuting terrorists has plenty of occupational hazards.
Of course, the field of action of terrorists is not limited to their country of residence. In the case of Zulfiqar Ali, for example, the incident that he was investigating didn’t happen in Pakistan at all. The militants got to the port of Mumbai by sea. And the rest is tragic history.
I have written in the past about drone strikes, and predictably, received a lot of negative feedback for it. And yet, I haven’t been offered an alternative. What are you supposed to do when you have armed and dangerous enemies who (not by accident, of course) live in a chaotic country where the government will not, or as evidenced by the example of Zulfiqar Ali, cannot do anything about them? Do you have a choice other than taking matters into your own hand?
