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The article loses focus towards the end
Chickens coming home to roost
The massacre in Peshawar raised questions amid the tragedy. That so many children were killed, and that too when they went to school, should cause grief, but need it cause revenge? If so, shouldn’t the revenge be exacted on the guilty? We have seen two hangings beginning the series, but weren’t the hanged men respectively guilty of the attack on GHQ and the attempted murder of then President Pervez Musharraf? They should have been hanged before, not kept in reserve for revenge. The killing of militants in the tribal areas was probably not justified anyhow. After all, they had not been tried. And a trial is not just to justify society committing the killing, but also to provide some form of closure to the families. And here we have so many families…
We all knew militants were bad, but these were so bad that other militants said their act was to be condemned. But the refusal to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban any longer begs an awkward question about the military. After all, who makes that distinction? We have been told the militants targeted an Army-run school because they don’t like Operation Zarb-e-Azb. That answers what the military wants asked. What they don’t want asked is how the militants got in. And why the students of a military school could do nothing except get slaughtered. Of course, when something like this happens, rationality takes a backseat, but when the choice is between certain death resisting and certain death being slaughtered, what is one taught to choose? Does anyone remember the example set by Aitzaz Hasan, the kid in Hangu who saved his school but lost his life by jumping unarmed on a suicide bomber?
Is there no contradiction in the attempt to link the militants to Afghanistan and India, while not mentioning the USA, which still occupies the former, and is befriending the latter? Would this much fuss have been made had it not been an Army school? There wasn’t this fuss made when Jamia Hafsa was attacked, or the madrasa in Bajaur where 82 kids were killed in 2006.
But Imran Khan has also cancelled his sit-in, though his PTI is still in negotiations with the government. And Imran was as linked to the Army as the Taliban are supposed to be. Though he cancelled the sit-in for such a tragic reason, there were still cries, I don’t know why, of ‘bakri oi.’ By the way, it seems that Faisalabad has been made a dangerous place by the cops. First a PTI protester was killed there, then the hangings took place there. I assume the date of the Peshawar massacre, December 16, coinciding with the 43rd anniversary of the fall of Dhaka, has no importance.
The Army would like that date torn out of the calendar, and still insists that it was a political defeat, not a military one, as if the late Lt Gen A.A.K. Niazi was the head of a political party, not the GOC-in-C East Pakistan. That claim chimes with the utter silence of those military and civilian officials responsible to prevent this to offer to resign. The dogged clinging to office of the PTI government contrasts with its demand for Mian Nawaz’s resignation.
All the PTI has done is promote a slogan. A kid (in kindergarten) was heard in Lahore saying, “Go Teacher go!” I can’t help wondering what ambitions have been raised by the Peshawar massacre. And why am I reminded of the cliché about the PPP, that it ‘gave awareness’ to the poor?
Just before the Peshawar massacre rocked the whole country, there was a shutdown in Lahore, one of the series organized by the PTI. To accompany it, we had a hostage drama in a Sydney café, with the hostage taker, who was killed along with two hostages, demanded a Daish flag. Well, it seems Australia finally fulfilled its ambition of being a victim in the War on Terror. It has kept quieter about the discovery of eight bodies, seven of them siblings, in a Cairns home. The mother, who was taken out of the house in an ambulance, has now been charged. She does not belong to Daish. For some reason, no one seems to be commenting that she is an Aborigine. Racism at work?
On the day of the Lahore protest, there was also a standoff in Ghent, Belgium, as well as a family shooting in Pennsylvania, USA, in which a former Marine reservist, who had been in Iraq during 2008, killed his former female in-laws, including his ex-wife, his ex-mother-in-law, his ex-sister-in-law and her husband and daughter. Neither of these, nor the Sydney drama, had anything to do with the PTI.
Nobody seems to have noticed that a kid had it rough in India, where in UP, one was killed. For not paying the school fee. By the teacher. Maybe Pakistan should lend its militants to India to collect school fees. But India seems to be busier taking revenge on Pakistan for having knocked it out of the Champions’ Trophy, by getting the FIH to ban its players for taking off their shirts to celebrate their victory. The real reason, everyone knows, is that India pays the bills, so the FIH gets pneumonia when India sneezes.
India should sneeze, for it is cold enough, but the wedding season has started nonetheless. I find that the weddings I’m invited to are now of people whose parents’ weddings I attended, a roundabout example of chickens eaten in youth coming home to roost. Of course, the kids were left to live. Unlike those in Peshawar. If you have been killed, it would be small consolation to have a candlelight vigil held, though those attending could go home convinced of what fine fellows they are.
Chickens coming home to roost
The massacre in Peshawar raised questions amid the tragedy. That so many children were killed, and that too when they went to school, should cause grief, but need it cause revenge? If so, shouldn’t the revenge be exacted on the guilty? We have seen two hangings beginning the series, but weren’t the hanged men respectively guilty of the attack on GHQ and the attempted murder of then President Pervez Musharraf? They should have been hanged before, not kept in reserve for revenge. The killing of militants in the tribal areas was probably not justified anyhow. After all, they had not been tried. And a trial is not just to justify society committing the killing, but also to provide some form of closure to the families. And here we have so many families…
We all knew militants were bad, but these were so bad that other militants said their act was to be condemned. But the refusal to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban any longer begs an awkward question about the military. After all, who makes that distinction? We have been told the militants targeted an Army-run school because they don’t like Operation Zarb-e-Azb. That answers what the military wants asked. What they don’t want asked is how the militants got in. And why the students of a military school could do nothing except get slaughtered. Of course, when something like this happens, rationality takes a backseat, but when the choice is between certain death resisting and certain death being slaughtered, what is one taught to choose? Does anyone remember the example set by Aitzaz Hasan, the kid in Hangu who saved his school but lost his life by jumping unarmed on a suicide bomber?
Is there no contradiction in the attempt to link the militants to Afghanistan and India, while not mentioning the USA, which still occupies the former, and is befriending the latter? Would this much fuss have been made had it not been an Army school? There wasn’t this fuss made when Jamia Hafsa was attacked, or the madrasa in Bajaur where 82 kids were killed in 2006.
But Imran Khan has also cancelled his sit-in, though his PTI is still in negotiations with the government. And Imran was as linked to the Army as the Taliban are supposed to be. Though he cancelled the sit-in for such a tragic reason, there were still cries, I don’t know why, of ‘bakri oi.’ By the way, it seems that Faisalabad has been made a dangerous place by the cops. First a PTI protester was killed there, then the hangings took place there. I assume the date of the Peshawar massacre, December 16, coinciding with the 43rd anniversary of the fall of Dhaka, has no importance.
The Army would like that date torn out of the calendar, and still insists that it was a political defeat, not a military one, as if the late Lt Gen A.A.K. Niazi was the head of a political party, not the GOC-in-C East Pakistan. That claim chimes with the utter silence of those military and civilian officials responsible to prevent this to offer to resign. The dogged clinging to office of the PTI government contrasts with its demand for Mian Nawaz’s resignation.
All the PTI has done is promote a slogan. A kid (in kindergarten) was heard in Lahore saying, “Go Teacher go!” I can’t help wondering what ambitions have been raised by the Peshawar massacre. And why am I reminded of the cliché about the PPP, that it ‘gave awareness’ to the poor?
Just before the Peshawar massacre rocked the whole country, there was a shutdown in Lahore, one of the series organized by the PTI. To accompany it, we had a hostage drama in a Sydney café, with the hostage taker, who was killed along with two hostages, demanded a Daish flag. Well, it seems Australia finally fulfilled its ambition of being a victim in the War on Terror. It has kept quieter about the discovery of eight bodies, seven of them siblings, in a Cairns home. The mother, who was taken out of the house in an ambulance, has now been charged. She does not belong to Daish. For some reason, no one seems to be commenting that she is an Aborigine. Racism at work?
On the day of the Lahore protest, there was also a standoff in Ghent, Belgium, as well as a family shooting in Pennsylvania, USA, in which a former Marine reservist, who had been in Iraq during 2008, killed his former female in-laws, including his ex-wife, his ex-mother-in-law, his ex-sister-in-law and her husband and daughter. Neither of these, nor the Sydney drama, had anything to do with the PTI.
Nobody seems to have noticed that a kid had it rough in India, where in UP, one was killed. For not paying the school fee. By the teacher. Maybe Pakistan should lend its militants to India to collect school fees. But India seems to be busier taking revenge on Pakistan for having knocked it out of the Champions’ Trophy, by getting the FIH to ban its players for taking off their shirts to celebrate their victory. The real reason, everyone knows, is that India pays the bills, so the FIH gets pneumonia when India sneezes.
India should sneeze, for it is cold enough, but the wedding season has started nonetheless. I find that the weddings I’m invited to are now of people whose parents’ weddings I attended, a roundabout example of chickens eaten in youth coming home to roost. Of course, the kids were left to live. Unlike those in Peshawar. If you have been killed, it would be small consolation to have a candlelight vigil held, though those attending could go home convinced of what fine fellows they are.
