Violence is soaring to new levels in Pakistan, with militants unleashing a wave of deadly attacks – and the government is dithering about what to do, writes guest columnist Ahmed Rashid.Tuesday 21 January was a fairly normal day in Pakistan. Twenty-nine Shia Muslims were killed by Sunni militants near Quetta in Balochistan province after a suicide bomber rammed a car filled with explosives into the bus they were travelling in. Meanwhile, in Karachi, three Shias were shot dead, in another attack claimed by Sunni extremists.And on the same day, renowned Urdu writer and professor Asghar Nadeem Syed was wounded by unknown gunmen in Lahore.Meanwhile three anti-polio vaccinators, including two women, were gunned down in Karachi by Taliban militants – the third such attack in Karachi in a week.Meanwhile, the army claimed it had killed 40 militants in a bombing raid that was itself retaliation for a suicide attack near army headquarters in Rawalpindi the day before. That attack left 13 people, including eight soldiers, dead.A day earlier, 20 soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on an army convoy in the north-west of the country.

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