Peshawar attack: Pakistan, no country for hope

The people have spoken, the politicians have spoken, the opinion-makers have too. Pakistan has been slapped so hard by its own child that it is said to have decided to act against the killers of children. A shaken nation has realised that the snake it fed, nourished and trained to dance to its tune can bite it. There is optimism in the air, moist with grief as 132 school children were buried in Peshawar. I see no such silver lining, I see no hope of any change from what should be a course-changing event for the country that faces the worst face of terrorism. 

With a society so broken and the establishment so compromised, all you can give your neighbour is empathy and some comfort on days like December 16, the day I watched a lot of Pakistani TV, listened to sane people mourning, condemning and vowing to fix the Taliban once and forever with their empty statements. I am not talking about the victims, their families and the Pakistanis your heart went out to. I am talking about those who set the narrative, those who want to invent a new future for Pakistan, those who preside over its precarious present. Blinded by power and ambition, they learn no lessons. 

Disease Pakistan

When a shocked Prime Minister of Pakistan rushed to Peshawar, he reflected the sense of immediacy to arrest the cycle of violence that has his country in its grips. He did nothing more than that. A day later he resolved, on behalf of all political parties, that they will not discriminate between the good Taliban and the bad Taliban. As if the Taliban were the only messengers of death Pakistan has to worry about. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba and the unknown brigades that pick out Hazara Shias to slaughter them and leave Baloch bodies to rot in the wilderness. These outfits waging war against the Pakistani State are just symptoms, like the Taliban are. Not the disease. Treating two symptoms out of tens of them has no effect on the disease. It’s that simple.

Nawaz had his adversary Imran Khan sitting beside him to show off political unity against terrorism. Imran Khan is a wimp when it comes to dealing with terror. Just yesterday, even after the Taliban claimed that they had done it, he couldn’t muster up the courage to name them while he condemned the attack. Do you notice the total absence of the balls of steel he shows off while sitting on a dharna against Nawaz Sharif? His party rules Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the attack took place. 

Just days after, a motion was moved in the KP Assembly to congratulate Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan’s second Nobel laureate. His party Tehreek-e-Insaaf defeated the motion. Because it wouldn’t have gone down well with the Taliban who tried to kill Malala. You see the absence of courage in Pakistan’s most popular politician to stand for what is right? That’s the disease. Pakistan’s second Nobel laureate went to her London home, because she couldn’t come to her home country to celebrate it with her people. That’s the disease.  

Not so noble Constitution

That brings us to the first Nobel laureate: Abdus Salam. The physicist is not allowed to rest in peace in Pakistani soil. Dr Salam was so devout a Muslim that he called himself a Muslim first and a scientist later. But he was an Ahmadiyya Muslim, the kind of Muslim that many Muslims claim aren’t Muslims in the first place. Dr Salam died in London, but was buried in Rabwa in Pakistan’s Punjab. His epitaph read ‘First Muslim Nobel Laureate’. A court ordered that the word Muslim be erased. Pakistan’s Parliament passed an amendment to the Constitution that declared Ahmadiyyas non-Muslims. Pakistani citizens, including Ahmadiyyas, have to willy-nilly attest to this fact when they apply for a passport. That is the disease. 

The amendment came even before General Zia ul-Haq arrived on the scene and made it worse. He facilitated the disease to infect every impressionable mind as Islamism entered textbooks and hatred for others, more so for Jews and Hindus, became the official state policy. The disease has spread since, so deep into the body of Pakistan that a cure seems impossible. By simply othering some people, one could make them the object of hate that could not be questioned. 

So when Mumtaz Qadri killed the then Governor of Punjab Province Salman Taseer, the man he was deputed to protect, he became a hero and was showered with rose petals by learned lawyers of the high court. Salman Taseer died because he opposed the othering of the tiny Christian minority by standing up for Asia Bibi. And guess what Pakistan was caught debating? Whether Salman Taseer was a shaheed, a martyr, or not. Most argued that since he was killed by a soldier of God, he couldn’t be. Since he stood for the rights of a disbeliever, he couldn’t be. That’s the disease.

Disgusting and dangerous

That’s why I was disgusted to see the reaction of some of the grieving on December 16. Awami National Party leader Ghulam Ahmed Billour was sobbing as he mourned the fact that the children were killed by Muslims, not “Jews or Hindus”. As if a Muslim killed by Jews or Hindus is acceptable, as acceptable as a Muslim killing a Hindu or a Jew is kosher in Pakistan? I almost threw up listening to Islamic scholar Maulana Abdul Aziz who said you couldn’t wish away darkness by condemning it. He refused to condemn the massacre since the panel did not address the root cause. Yes, the maulana wanted a discussion and probably condemnation of Zarb-e-Azb, the Pakistani Army’s operation against Taliban. That’s the disease.

The TV anchor disgusted me who said the children have left the world of pain and were resting in paradise. I wish I could slap him to wake him up to the fact that the 132 children hadn’t left this ‘worldly’ world of their own will. They were massacred. And no, they were not martyred, either. That they would not be in any paradise because the six terrorists who died after killing them would also be there. When the religion becomes the state, the holy book overrules the Constitution, Sharia or no Sharia. Paradise becomes part of state policy, and cannot be denied.

Myopic and medieval

Most Pakistani children, who do not have access to science education, grow up believing that there is a paradise for people who die for Allah. My wish is to see Pakistan educating its children about the lack of evidence about this mythical place. That will stop half the suicide bombers, because very few young men would die for nothing but killing someone else. They are lured by the greater returns - in paradise - promised by their elders. But Pakistan is a religious state by birth. And the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lacks the will to fight the disease.

Pakistani civil society members launched a movement to bring back death penalty to deter terrorists, totally ignoring the fact that this breed of terrorists wants to die. They are called fidayeen, the term they eulogised Kashmiri terrorists with. The good terrorists were those who died killing Indians. The bad terrorists were those killing Pakistanis. And as it happens, the state mixed up these labels and now doesn’t understand why the poisonous snakes it reared is biting its rear. 

Army chief Raheel Sharif vowed revenge by killing more Taliban. He asked Afghanistan to hand over the leadership of Pakistani Taliban who take shelter in Afghanistan. Irony was killed on the border because the chiefs of the Afghan Taliban are sheltered in Pakistan. Kashmiri terrorists have training camps in Pakistan, Uighur jihadis have similar camps and so do Sunni extremists fighting Iran. Hafiz Saeed, a designated terrorist, holds rallies in the heart of Pakistani establishment, and is allowed to, because he wants to kill only Indians. 

That his organisation holds a prayer meeting for the children killed in Peshawar school attack. They are asking God to forgive the children and allow them heaven. Forgiveness for what? Is students getting killed by the Students of Islam a sin? At the prayer and condolence meeting, the Jamat-ud-Dawa maniacs vow to take revenge by attacking India, America and Israel. Is this praying for them or insulting them? Among the dead in Bihari Colony yesterday were some children named Osama. Bin Laden, the enemy of America. Their parents named them to celebrate the Osama who brought down the Twin Towers. That’s the disease. 

And the hero dies in the end

There are heroes, too. The principal of the Army Public School who was burnt to death by the seven terrorists on Tuesday. Thousands of journalists who brave bullets to expose the diagnosis. Tens of thousands of civil society members who resist the establishment’s attempt to Ziafy their beloved nation. Some politicians who say it like it is, even if their civilised voices are drowned in the cacophony of hatred. And then there is Aitzaz Hasan. The 15-year-old boy saw a man in a suicide jacket moving towards his school during assembly time. About 2,000 of his schoolmates were already lining up. He ran and gave the monster a tight hug long before he could reach his target. He died and saved many lives that day in Ibrahimzai, in northwestern Pakistan’s Hangu. He is Pakistan’s hope. Or he was. Because Pakistan’s deathly disease kills its hopes almost every day.