Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has dashed to Peshawar and is in the city; Army Chief Raheel Sharif also shortened his Quetta visit and proceeded to Peshawar to oversee the army action against terrorists who went on an indiscriminate killing spree, Dec. 16. Nawaz has called an All Parties Conference (APC) on Dec 17 to discuss strategy in the aftermath of cold blooded and brutal murder of 141 students and their teachers in an army school in the morning hours of Dec 16. Hundreds of injured are being treated in Peshawar hospitals.
By the time this letter is published, APC will be over with announcement of loads of heavily worded resolutions vowing to defeat the terrorism no matter what may come. Does anyone expect anything from these resolutions will change the situation on ground? Call me pessimistic but believe me nothing will change, perhaps because we have not yet reached the turning point. When we didn’t change after losing 50,000 civilians and security personnel, then what could this loss of 132 kids do?
The APC is going to be attended by whom — all those who have been either actively logistical and financial backers of Taliban, or been their apologists at every front. Should we expect that their hearts and minds have changed who called dead Taliban as ‘martyrs’ and Pakistan soldiers as ‘merely dead people’, who called Taliban their ‘brothers’ and offered them to open offices in Peshawar to facilitate their activities, who openly asked Taliban to spare Punjab province as government over there was not their enemy, who recruited youth to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan, who have been implementing a flawed strategy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban, who opted to preach and justify ‘qital fi sabeel Allah’ (massacre in the name of God) in public meetings which were attended by thousands of their die-hard supporters, who dragged the so-called peace negotiations with Taliban early this year to let them safely demobilise from North Waziristan, who cancelled launching ceremony of Malala’s autobiography and instead celebrated ‘I Am Not Malala’ day all across the private schools in Pakistan condemning her struggle for girls education. You can’t expect any good from this junk leadership.
Still we are discussing the ‘output’ of terrorism in the form of Taliban and similar groups. We are not touching the ‘input’ to this heinous crime. Regrettably I see Pakistan taking no concrete and concerted action to bring religious seminaries under the state control to oversee what’s being taught over there and who are funding them.
Since the US-USSR war in Afghanistan, clergy in Pakistan has tasted the blood of power, they have expanded their influence exponentially. As long as they enjoy state protection and support to do whatever they want in the name of religion, nothing will change. Pakistanis have to decide whether they want a moderate, liberal and enlightened state taking care of its subjects without any discrimination; or a theological, conservative, medieval-style state. Let’s decide and move ahead and save our children from dying an uncalled death.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia
