Pakistan, April 15 -- Surely, there is no landscape more blood-stained in Pakistan than Balochistan and no community more beleaguered than the Shias.

The heartwrenching manner in which nine innocent passengers were plucked from a bus not while moving through a warland but within their own country and killed in pure execution fashion in Noshki, Balochistan, has shown that some acts are too grotesque for the state to sit back and do nothing.

The government must take immediate action to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens. Perhaps, the state, too, realises that militant outfits cannot be allowed to dismantle the writ of a sovereign, functioning country, and, therefore, everyone from provincial to federal machinery claims the c...