After the bomb, devastated Peshawar asks why
A policeman helps an elderly woman as she arrives to search for relatives a day after a deadly car bomb blast at a market in Peshawar on October 29, 2009
PESHAWAR: Frightened Peshawaris lashed out Thursday against the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in their conservative city, where insecurity is paralysing ordinary life.
A parked car packed with explosives blew up on Wednesday in a narrow street of the Meena market, known locally as the women's bazaar, demolishing shops and killing more than 100 people.
Many of those killed were women hunting for bargains with their children among the plethora of female clothing concessions.
Within seconds, flames tore through the wooden structures of buildings, tightly packed material and clothes shops, engulfing the market in a massive fire that took hours to control.
Bodies were ripped to shreds. Corpses were charred. Faces were unrecognisable and grief was almost palpable across the city of Pashtuns the same ethnic group that dominates the ranks of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban.
In 19 days, more than 150 people were wiped out in market-place bombings in Peshawar, turning a love affair for a city felt by millions of Pakistani Pashtuns into fear over a worrying new trend towards mass civilian bombings.
Nasir Khan, 52, and his 22-year-old son Bilal were sitting in their clothing shop when they were killed, plunging their family who had migrated from the tribal hinterland into grief and despair.
For the first time I understand what grief is. I don't think I will ever see such grief in my whole life. My father and my brother. Both of them dead. Can somebody tell me what they did wrong? said a weeping Aamir Nasir.
Fear of bombs, suicide attacks and the killing of innocent people has become routine in Peshawar, where children's education has been paralysed by shuttered schools while traffic is thinning out and families avoid markets.
Seven attacks in four months have battered the historic old city, which in the past was a tourist attraction and a centuries old trading capital made rich by the silk road snaking east to west.
People are now really worried. Living in this city is a disaster, downtown shopkeeper Mohammad Amin told AFP.
Everyone is worried about the future, his own future, his children's future and about the future of his business. Business is already on the brink of collapse, he added.
Peshawar suffers from its location on the edge of a tribal belt thick with Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists -- terrain branded the most dangerous place in the world by US officials and the incubator of terror plots on the west.
There is an increasing feeling of isolation. Relatives living elsewhere are reluctant to visit. Most foreign airlines no longer fly into the city. Streets and restaurants are no-go areas after dark. The Taliban lurk in the suburbs.
Everyone is upset. Police have barricades and checkpoints in every street but even then the Taliban attack inside the city, said Arshan Farid, a lawyer at Peshawar high court where lawyers held a mass prayer for the victims.
Frankly, the time has come when everyone wants to leave, he added.
Market traders and shopkeepers have downed tools for three days' mourning and threatened to destabilise the government with street protests.
We are fed up. We have given the government three days to stop this bloodshed and provide us with security, otherwise we will start a protest movement, Ghufran Ullah, head of the city traders association, told AFP.
We have already announced a three-day mourning. Shutters will be closed to mourn and to protest this bombing, he said.
Cinemas are on the verge of collapse. The only theatre in Peshawar has been closed for six years. Schools, snooker clubs and CD shops have been bombed and militants prey on Internet cafes as another easy target.
Death is dancing in this city. Every week it strikes in a different shape and nobody is here to stop it. I don't know where to go, said bank clerk Saghir Khan, summing up the dilemma for many.
DAWN.COM | Metropolitan | After the bomb, devastated Peshawar asks why
