Pakistan's Bomb fatigue has set in

[third eye]

This reminded me of the situation that was in Punjab in the late 80's. Despite terrorist attacks life continued..

Pakistan's bomb fatigue has set in | Al Jazeera Blogs

I first reached the bomb site as the day began to break over Karachi. Just hours earlier, a truck carrying 1000kg of explosives had destroyed almost a whole city block.

The work of the Pakistani Taliban.

The scene was a gruesome reminder that Pakistan teeters on the edge of collapse, perhaps saved only by the extraordinary resilience of its citizens.

Resilience that seems to be turning to acceptance. Acceptance that bombings are now part of the country's every day.

My driver Maqbool actually heard the blast. Chain smoking and without a hint of nervousness, he tells me what happened.

"The noise was like a thunderbolt going off inside my head. I was asleep kilometres away from the site, but I heard it. I thought the bomb had gone off in my street. I ran outside and only saw others as confused as me," he recalled.

"In the end it's only God that decides who lives and who dies. We live our lives and put our faith in God. It was not my turn to die last night."

His words were echoed by many of the people I spoke to at the site.

One thing has struck me. In four years of covering Pakistan for Al Jazeera, I have noticed a change in peoples' attitude. It's a sense of weariness at yet another bomb, yet another devastating attack.

Bomb fatigue has set in.

My friends across the country no longer race to their TV screens when news breaks. They no longer sit glued to their televisions, on the edge of their seats as they watch transfixed and in fear.

I don't know if you can call it a normal part of Pakistani life. How could such tragedy and death ever be normal?

But it's a part of the routine here, and there is a sense that bombs occur, and that life continues despite them.

Clearly those who were caught up in the blast and who survived are scarred for life. But for others, well, like I said, it feels like a sense of fatigue has set in.

It was perhaps best illustrated by one reporter who was at the site, surveying the scene. Her words were stark.

"And here we go again ..." she muttered to no one in particular.

I know reporters are a cynical bunch, yet her words were not cynical, but weary.

Walking in the streets around the blast site, you can see small children playing in the wreckage.

You have to wonder about the effect a sustained campaign of violence will have on their generation. What effect will it have on the nation's psyche?

Pakistan had been relatively quiet over the last three months. I say "relatively" since we just witnessed the most devastating floods in the country's history - a tragedy of a different kind.

That led many to wonder whether the Pakistani Taliban were becoming a spent force. It seems that question has now been answered - in a deadly way.

I hope Pakistan never gets used to living with the fear of bombs. No one wants to live in fear, but surely no one wants to live with the numbness that comes with having no fear.

 

[Hulk]

Things are getting better, it will take time but after every night their is a day.

 

[Qasibr]

We didn't have any of these things at *all* before the US Afghan war. Hopefully, things would be better once the US leaves next year.

Things like suicide blasts were completely unheard of in Pakistani society before 2001. Now this happens like twice a week.

 

[faisaljaffery]

There are forign hands behind these every day attacks but Pakistan's brave forces have retalitated well and killed the most of the millitants. now few of them are remaining who will also be killed.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

We didn't have any of these things at *all* before the US Afghan war. Hopefully, things would be better once the US leaves next year.

Things like suicide blasts were completely unheard of in Pakistani society before 2001. Now this happens like twice a week.

not sure how old were you during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan

in addtion to millions of refugees we got, Hammer group which used to smash the victims with blunt objects (victims included from 6 moht old infants to old men & women)
then we had heroine, klashenkov, Secterianism and bomb blasts
Karachi & Peshawar were a constant site.


so the roots go farther than the current American occupation. its just that the same religious bigots are doing it at a massive scale & every Pakistani is suffering

 

[T-Faz]

The two posters above Irfan Baloch are either limited in their knowledge or overlook the past to put the blame on someone else.

We did have bomb blasts before, as Baloch said, there used to be a blast a day during Zia's last years.

Also they are our own people who are killing us, no one else, if there even was a foreign hand, it is only using our own to hurt us.

 

[Gazzi]

not sure how old were you during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan

in addtion to millions of refugees we got, Hammer group which used to smash the victims with blunt objects (victims included from 6 moht old infants to old men & women)
then we had heroine, klashenkov, Secterianism and bomb blasts
Karachi & Peshawar were a constant site.


so the roots go farther than the current American occupation. its just that the same religious bigots are doing it at a massive scale & every Pakistani is suffering

Here we go again.........."religious bigots"..........twll me, are you too not a religious bigot of some sort.........this all depends on whose version of events you look at and through.

PA calls them terrorists, as do I, but that does not mean we paint all religious groups and parties bigots, otherwise we would be a nation with no religion, as each party will call the other bogots.

JuI are bigots, but also is the Pakistani President and Prime Minister and every other citizens of Pakistan, WHY........because they too have their version of what the meaning of Islam is.........therefore, by my understanding, they too are bigots, sending the PA to enforce their ways.............would that be true also..............

 

[Gazzi]

The two posters above Irfan Baloch are either limited in their knowledge or overlook the past to put the blame on someone else.

We did have bomb blasts before, as Baloch said, there used to be a blast a day during Zia's last years.

Also they are our own people who are killing us, no one else, if there even was a foreign hand, it is only using our own to hurt us.

We need to be tough on these people carrying out the blasts....simply clearing away the rubble is not an option for us anymore.

We need to adopt an Israeli side of attitude, where we investigate, identify and locate the family of these suicide bombers and seize all their assets...........the suicide bombers are normally paid handsomely by their handlers for their families, seize it all........if the family was aware of the actions of their loved one who conducted the blast, them jail them just like they do in the UK, if the family does not inform the authorities, then they are too commiting an offence, and if they have been paid after the blast and not informed the Police of it, then again, they commit an offence.

This sort of action will most definately make the bomber think very seriously of their actions, as they will not be getting rid of themselves and their families behind them living happily ever after, no, they will most likely be serving life sentences on their actions..........

 

[muse]

Sawab and Kabaab



November 13, 2010
Here’s a Woman Fighting Terrorism. With Microloans.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

LAHORE, Pakistan

An old friend of mine here fights terrorists, but not the way you’re thinking. She could barely defeat a truculent child in hand-to-hand combat, and if she ever picked up an AK-47 — well, you’d pray it was unloaded.

Roshaneh Zafar is an American- educated banker who fights extremism with microfinance. She has dedicated her life to empowering some of Pakistan’s most impoverished women and giving them the tools to run businesses of their own. The United States should learn from warriors like her.

Bullets and drones may kill terrorists, but Roshaneh creates jobs and educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people — draining the swamps that breed terrorists.

“Charity is limited, but capitalism isn’t,” Roshaneh said. “If you want to change the world, you need market-based solutions.” That’s the point of microfinance — typically, lending very poor people small amounts of money so that they can buy a rickshaw or raw materials and start a tiny business.

Roshaneh grew up in elite circles here in Lahore and studied business at the Wharton School and economics at Yale. After a stint at the World Bank, she returned to Pakistan in 1996 to start her microfinance organization. She called it the Kashf Foundation.

Everybody thought Roshaneh was nuts. And at first nothing went right. The poor refused to borrow. Or if they borrowed, they didn’t repay their loans.

But Roshaneh persisted, and today Kashf has 152 branches around the country. It has dispersed more than $200 million to more than 300,000 families. Now Roshaneh is moving into microsavings, to help the poor build assets, as well as programs to train the poor to run businesses more efficiently. She is even thinking of expanding into schools for the poor.

Microfinance is sometimes oversold as a silver bullet — which it’s not. Careful follow-up studies suggest that gains from microloans are often quite modest.

Some borrowers squander money or start businesses that fail. Some micro-lenders tarnish the field because they’re incompetent, and others because they rake in profits with sky-high loan rates. Microfinance has also generally been less successful in Africa than in South Asia.

Yet done right, microfinance can make a significant difference. An outside evaluation found that after four years, Kashf borrowers are more likely than many others to enjoy improved economic conditions — and that’s what I’ve seen over the years as I’ve visited Kashf borrowers.

On this trip, I met a woman named Parveen Baji, who says she never attended a day of school and until recently was completely illiterate. She had 14 children, but five died.

Ms. Parveen’s husband, who also never attended school, regularly beat her and spent the family savings on narcotics, she says. The family’s only possessions were four cots on which they slept, crammed three or four to a cot, in a rented apartment.

“One night all my children were hungry,” she remembered. “I sent my daughter to ask for food from a neighbor. And the neighbor said, ‘you’ve become a beggar,’ and refused.”

Then Ms. Parveen got a $70 loan from Kashf and started a jewelry and cosmetics business, buying in bulk and selling to local shops. Ms. Parveen couldn’t read the labels, but she memorized which bottle was which. As her business thrived, she began to struggle to learn reading and arithmetic — and proved herself an ace student. I fired math problems at her, and she dazzled me with her quick responses.

Ms. Parveen began to start new businesses, even building a laundry that she put her husband in charge of to keep him busy. He no longer beats her, she says, and when I interviewed him separately he seemed a little awed by her.

Eventually, Ms. Parveen started a restaurant and catering business that now has eight employees, including some of her daughters. She bought a home and has put some of her children through high school — and a son, the brightest student, through college. She has just paid $5,800 for a permit for him to move to London to take a health sector job.

Ms. Parveen tried to look modest as she told me this, but she failed. She was beaming and shaking her head in wonder as she watched her son speak English with me, dazzled at the thought that she was dispatching her university-educated son to Europe. “Microfinance has changed my life,” she said simply.

That’s an unusual success story. But the larger message is universal: helping people start businesses, create jobs and support education is a potent way to undermine extremism.

We Americans overinvest in firepower to defeat extremism and underinvest in development, and so we could learn something useful from Roshaneh. The toolkit to fight terrorism includes not only missiles but also microfinance and economic opportunity.

The antonym of “militant” is often “job.”

 

[Salik]

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The answer to above two posts

When there comes the question of religious concerns there is no issue of finance, if someone is committed to serve his cause he will do it without any financial temptation. The religious extremists mentioned here are in very our own society I have seen personally them, there’re in schools, colleges, offices and markets they’re well established and those living in rural areas or having limited resources are equally dedicated to their cause.

They don’t think themselves as extremists but on right path with no compromise on religious issues because they’re true followers…they are in great number making a big population they donate and this is source of funding of TTP… what TTP gets from outside is also a source but they do not believe in foreign funding they think whatever TTP is doing is because of ‘ghaibi imdaad’ from Allah Almighty, so micro financing will surely help Pakistan fight poverty and its harms but no fighting religious extremism… it needs some unique kind of solution and we can also NOT wipe out this ‘population’


and the second point of Israeli type of actions… as said suicide bombers are from within our society and they’re not few, each and every one of them is ready to sacrifice his life on one call it is impossible to seize their assets etc. no one can predict any potential suicide bomber… AGAIN it needs a unique kind of solution as we cannot wipe out this population

 

[NWO]

When there comes the question of religious concerns there is no issue of finance, if someone is committed to serve his cause he will do it without any financial temptation. The religious extremists mentioned here are in very our own society I have seen personally them, there’re in schools, colleges, offices and markets they’re well established and those living in rural areas or having limited resources are equally dedicated to their cause.

They don’t think themselves as extremists but on right path with no compromise on religious issues because they’re true followers…they are in great number making a big population they donate and this is source of funding of TTP… what TTP gets from outside is also a source but they do not believe in foreign funding they think whatever TTP is doing is because of ‘ghaibi imdaad’ from Allah Almighty, so micro financing will surely help Pakistan fight poverty and its harms but no fighting religious extremism… it needs some unique kind of solution and we can also NOT wipe out this ‘population’


and the second point of Israeli type of actions… as said suicide bombers are from within our society and they’re not few, each and every one of them is ready to sacrifice his life on one call it is impossible to seize their assets etc. no one can predict any potential suicide bomber… AGAIN it needs a unique kind of solution as we cannot wipe out this population

Thing this, the religious aspect of it is the symptom, not the cause. They are always nut jobs who will be saying this stuff but it's if whether the rest of the population listens. When times are good with educational and economical opportunities, they are often times ignored. But when times get job, like now, they are revered as (false) leaders. So, look at the environment that allows these kinds of infection to spread.

Plus, many are fighting because they see ISAF troops are foreign occupiers. They'll attack those troops, and anyone who helps them, including Pakistan.

 

[imiimmad]

I think it is a combination of both corrupt religious idealogy and financial problems that keeps the supply of these human bombs rolling.
But the important thing is that we are missing the real bad guyz in the picture,put the two things above and see if it's all we need to create a terorist.
No it ain't enough,there has to be someone else.