For too long both the Pakistani and Afghan governments have been pursuing efforts of talks with the terrorists who have, in return, brought about unforgettable sorrows and miseries in the lives of even the common people. The recent attack in Peshawar, Pakistan that killed 148 students and staff members of a military school left no doubt that Taliban militants are not interested in talks.

In response to this massacre, leaders around the world, from Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to U.S president Barack Obama stood by Pakistani government against these terrorist fighters to be eliminated and condemned the attack in the strongest possible terms, saying that this was the worst massacre in the history of Pakistan, against innocent children and a senseless and cold-blooded act of terror by the Tahrik-e-Taliban and shared their solidarity and feeling of sorrows with the families of 148 innocent souls.

Of course, civilians have neither the authority nor the power to take a responsive step but to helplessly cry upon the dead bodies of their beloved souls. They have trusted upon the reasonable promises of the authorities to protect their states and their lives and unfortunately they have been disappointed.

The Attack horrified the entire region, especially Afghanistan that has been going undergoing the negative effects of terrorism for decades. The attack in Peshawar is tragic and unlikely to be the last, rather threats the whole region. But the region stands on the cusp of a potentially game-changing transformation in which the Afghan and Pakistan governments understand that their interests are best served working together rather than undermining each other. Instead of shelling rockets on each other's territories, it is more reasonable to join hands in eliminating their common enemy – the terrorism.

This is a reminder that the militant movements across Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the rise to the beginning of another devastation in South Asia and posses a great threat to Afghanistan in particular.

Evidently, these terrorist groups had carried out dozens of similar deadly terrorist attacks against civilians, security officials and foreigners in both south Asian states in the last couple of months that have taken the lives of dozens of innocent souls.

The Afghan Taliban, similarly, have launched a bloody wave of urban violence in Kabul, including other major cities, by targeting innocent children, locals, government employees, aid workers and foreigners.

In Pakistan, though casualties reached at nearly 12,000 in 2009, they have remained between 5,000 and 6,000 every year since. A similar number of Afghans were killed and wounded in the first half of 2014 alone, up 24% compared with the same period in 2013, according to the UN reports released earlier. Of global attacks last month, 28% took place in Afghanistan or Pakistan, a recent study found. Iraq and Syria accounted for half.

In September, Al-Qaeda announced the formal establishment of the South Asian affiliate for which the South Asian leaders have not shown any reasonable reaction. Despite all these terrorist groups are different in their brutal movements and are not organizationally connected, they do share certain characteristics beyond the broad principles of so-called violent extremism.

Inevitably, they target where they realize that the government authorities are week against such illegal fighters or steeped in corruption, in the drug-trafficking heartlands of Afghanistan, slums in provincial Bangladeshi cities, in the rugged hills around Peshawar, or the un-policed no-go zones of Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital and enjoy high profile terrorist attacks against civilians in the heart of capital, Kabul where the police forces are corrupt. Video report released by TOLO, a local Afghan television last month showed that there were no police force at the checkpoints at nights in the heart of capital, Kabul. As a result, the whole region is steeped in bloodshed and mourning. 

Over the past decade or more, analysts have sought to determine the centre of gravity of militant Islamic activism. Some have argued for the Middle East, for Afghanistan, for Pakistan and even for the West. But with the resurgence of violence across such a wide swath of territory, last month a bomb attack on the Grand Mosque in the Nigerian city of Kano, 5,000 miles from Peshawar, killed 120 people, reassuring idea that there is one specific battleground where the more general counter-terrorist campaign might be won is looking far-fetched.

When in January and February 2013, twin bombings killed at least 180 Shiite Hazaras in Baluchistan, Pakistan’s response was that it was an unfortunate targeting of a minority group. When in May 2010, an Ahmadi Mosque was blown up in Lahore, killing around a hundred people, the response was the same. However, there have not been concrete steps to control the situation and now the Taliban insurgents have hit hard, showing that they have free hands to do whatever they want.

Now, it is time for both Pakistan and Afghanistan to tackle the situation of growing terrorism seriously, be honest in their efforts and must cooperate with each other instead of continuing the blame game as, ultimately, it would be the people and the government of both the countries that would suffer as a result of growing terror.