It can never be the same again
It has been over a month since Pakistan suffered from one of the worst terrorist attacks on its soil in which 132 children were slaughtered at the Army Public School in Peshawar. Seven militants stormed into the school and indiscriminately opened fire at the children and staff – savagely going after and killing them in their classrooms – leaving unhealable wounds on the souls of their loved ones. Terrorist attacks are nothing new to the people of Pakistan as the country has long been used as an experimental lab by domestic and international forces to create, train and use militants for their own geopolitical interests.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in the global war on terrorism as it is being fought in the streets, bazaars and schools of the country. The Taliban and other militant groups declared a war against Pakistan by attacking the key state institutions such as the army headquarters, police checkposts, airports, naval and air bases after Pakistan joined US and its allies in the war on terror in 2001. They committed cold-blooded murders of innocent civilians on the streets of Pakistan. Their barbarism did not even spare mosques, churches and Sufi shrines. However, what happened on the morning of December 16 was unimaginable and caused a deep sense of outrage and anger in public.
There are deepening impacts of this horrific incident on the state, policymakers and the public at large. For a long time, there had been a divided public opinion on starting a military operation against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistani Taliban were regarded nothing more than ‘bad guys’ angry at the state and were never considered as a serious threat to the country. Many in Pakistan had been in favour of negotiating with Taliban and the present government even went on to initiate a dialogue process with them officially in early 2014. However, time proved that their savagery had gone to a level where sadly there was no more room left to resolve matters on the table. They carried on with their vicious agenda to attack Pakistanis during the negotiation process until 15 June, 2015, when the army started military offensive against them in North Waziristan, called Operation Zarb-e-Azab, after the group attacked Jinnah International Airport, Karachi.
Even after the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azab, there was a divided opinion in the country about the need of this operation and its success. In Pakistan, there has always been a popular narrative against ‘ownership’ of the war on terrorism. Although, it’s a historic fact that the present war on terrorism was ‘imposed’ on Pakistan by the US and her international allies after 9/11, but the issues around extremism and terrorism were always present in the country. It eventually became Pakistan’s war when the state of Pakistan and its people became the targets of militants.
Those who directly or indirectly apologised for the Taliban’s brutalities in the name of US’s occupation in Afghanistan and drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan should not forget that Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), the group that occupied Swat Valley from 2007 to 2009, didn’t emerge as a reaction to any foreign occupation or drone attacks. The basis of their formation was to enforce ‘their version’ of Sharia in Pakistan. This war had become Pakistan’s war when the girls of Swat were threatened by TNSM militants not to attend their schools and they destroyed hundreds of schools in the region.
This war had become Pakistan’s war when they rejected the constitution of Pakistan and started attacking state institutions, civilians and security personnel. We might have avoided Peshawar’s dreadful attack if we had zero tolerance against the Taliban mindset right from the beginning. Although the army eventually intervened and got back the control of Swat Valley but one of the key leaders of TNSM, Maulvi Fazal Ullah, managed to escape from there by then — the very same Fazal Ullah who ordered to kill Malala Yousafzai and now heads the TTP that claimed responsibility of the massacre of school children in Peshawar.
Despite the fact that Pakistani people are extremely resilient in terms of getting on with life after so many disastrous terrorists attacks in their country, this time around the whole nation seems to be in a persistent state of affliction and pain. Those 132 children left 132 stories: the stories of our collective failure to deal with the challenges of terrorism and extremism, our failure not to take any concrete action against the flourishing industry of terrorists and their vicious narratives. Why did we wait so long to realise that those attacking our mosques, imambargahs, churches and Sufi shrines are our enemies? Why did we not wake up when those monsters were perverting our democratic culture? Why were we silent when they were brutally targeting our minorities and when they were threatening and killing our daughters?
Today, the entire political and military leadership is on one page along with the Pakistani nation in order to root out the menace of extremism from Pakistan. But is that enough? No real social change against extremism could be brought about without countering the extremist narratives of those groups who exploit religion in order to promote and impose their obscurantist views. Each and every individual of society has got to fulfil their civic responsibility to promote a culture of tolerance and to report and challenge any hate speech against anyone or any group. Those innocent kids who lost their lives in Peshawar can never come back but we need to put every effort to protect our future from bloodthirsty extremists and their atrocious ideologies.
Yes, Pakistan can never be the same after 16/12. The blood of those innocent school kids in Peshawar has washed away all confusion about who our real enemies are.