M. M Khajooria
16th November, 2014 will go down in the history of Pakistan nay that of the world as the blackest of black Tuesdays. It was on this terrible morning that seven zombies completely brainwashed, totally brutalised and fiendishly programmed attired in Pak Army uniforms were tasked by a bunch of devils going under the nomenclature of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan to storm the Army Public School, Peshawar. Reliable sources reveal that the killers were provided with lists of wives and children of army officers on active duty in Waziristan to be massacred. A lady teacher was burnt alive while her taught watched horrified and paralyzed with shock and fear. The mind failed to comprehend the enormity of assault so horrifying, so shocking and benumbing. The latest tally was 160 dead and over two hundred wounded, many of them critically. Please don’t forget, the TTP was the creation of Pak rulers and still enjoyed patronage of a section of ISI
This was certainly not the first such attack on schools. In 2004 , 186 children were massacred in Beslan, Russia, but the Peshawar attack was unique both in conception and execution .Never before were school children listed, chased, dragged out covering under classroom desks, lined up and shot through heads.
I watching the nearly eight hour long TV coverage of the horrendous Taliban attack on the Army Public school. The emotionally charged blow by blow account of the unfolding grisly happening by TV anchors numbed hearts, choked throats and bled tears. How could any sensitive human being hold back tears watching waling distraught mothers and sisters frantically searching for their loved ones invoking Allah’s mercy and heart broken parents collecting tiny dead bodies of their martyred children. Every single act of brutality inflicted wantonly, callously with surgical precision deepened the collective revulsion amongst the TV viewers across the globe especially in the neighbouring India. In this country people openly wept in homes, workplaces and on the roads as images of horror of Peshawar massacre of school children danced on the TV screens. The school children in India physically felt their trauma. They were outraged and roundly and strongly condemned the carnage. Schools across the country closed down for three day. The Indian Parliament shared the pain and grief of the people of Pakistan and offered heartfelt condolences on behalf of the nation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to his Pak counterpart on phone conveyed heartfelt condolences and offered any help that may be desired. I only wish a section of the political class and the media had shown requisite restraint and decorum and refrained from raising contentious issues till the next Friday or at the least till the end of official mourning. Our response to release of Lakhvi should also have been confined to calling for action against the prosecutors, filing of appeal against the bail order and continued detention of the culprit.
Given the overall environment and pattern of terrorist strikes, the Peshawar Army Public School attack was certainly not unexpected. The Global Coalition for the Protection of education Against Attack (June 2014) had mentioned about 800 School attacks from 2009 to 2012. The portents were ominous. To quote few instances. An explosion took place in Bannu 17th November while classes were on. A day earlier, a school bus was bombed in Khurram Agency, killing an 11-year-old boy and the bus driver. On 14th Nov, a bomb was detonated outside a girls’ school in Charsadda, destroying two classrooms. On 27th Oct., militants blew up a school in Bara Tehsil in Khyber Agency. In fact, Pakistan witnessed an attack on an educational institution nearly every week for the past several years. And what happened to those few who were apprehended and tried.? A measly 4 per cent conviction in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, wherein TTP has headquarters. That the Imran Khan party which ruled government was to put it mildly “soft” on TTP was no secret. The position in Punjab was no different. In 2012, 269 cases out of 365 ended in acquittal. In July 2012 a Karachi Court acquitted seven members of the Taliban accused of orchestrating a bomb attack, citing lack of evidence. Obviously, the governments were either remiss in their duty or were sympathetic towards the terrorists. Even those convicted and sentenced to death benefitted from the moratorium on executions and were reported to be kept in comfort in jails. It is only after the Peshawar attack that the moratorium was withdrawn and executions commenced.
“Where was the intelligence?” Demanded Dawn editorially ( 17th December 2014). “The military it pointed out has emphasised so-called intelligence-based operations against militants in recent months, but this was a spectacular failure of intelligence in a city, and an area within that city, that ought to have been at the very top of the list in terms of a security blanket.”
Stressing that “From such events can come the will to fight, but not really a strategy”. “Military operations in FATA and counterterrorism operations in the cities will” the editorial stated “amount to little more than fire-fighting unless there’s an attempt to attack the ideological roots of militancy and societal reach of militants”.
“Further” it pertinently pointed out , “there is the reality that militancy cannot be defeated at the national level alone. Militancy is a regional problem and until it is addressed as such, there will only be a long-term ebb and flow of militancy cycles destined to repeat themselves. Perhaps the starting point would be for the state to acknowledge that it does not quite have a plan or strategy as yet to fight militancy in totality. Denial will only lead to worse atrocities.”
( To be continued)
