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The last straw - Nadir Hassan
Beware the phrase ‘the last straw’. The last straw is a straw man, meant to comfort us into thinking that there are horrors so ghastly we will no longer abide them, that life can no longer continue as before. We have had enough last straws to build a bale of hay.
The straw that broke the camel’s back? Forget about it. Remember the public stoning of a woman in Swat? The market bombing in Islamabad? The church in Peshawar? You could add Malala Yousafzai to that list but too many people feel that attack was deserved/fake/insert your own evil interpretation here.
Nice though it would be to think the slaughter of 145 people, almost all of them children, at the Army Public School in Peshawar will be the last – finally, totally for real this time – straw. It won’t.
The political class acted as if this time was different. Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan rushed to power, with the PTI leader even temporarily setting aside his overwhelming obsession of overthrowing an elected government. Three days of mourning were announced, classes were cancelled and even cable operators said no music and entertainment programmes would be aired. This attack felt different. But feelings have a tendency to pass and end up meaning little if they aren’t acted on.
At the time of writing, the All-Parties Conference the prime minister called is yet to be held. Still, it is unlikely to be anything more than symbolic, an outpouring of grief which cannot plaster over the fact that our political parties rank the militant problem below their usual petty concerns on a list of priorities. They will hold their conference, say all the right things and, like the rest of us, go back to life pre-attack as we have always done before and will keep doing after. Call it resilience or call it selfishness. The end result is the same.
The military’s response too was purely symbolic, although its symbolism tends to be a lot more violent. It carried out a series of air strikes and gave the usual number of militants killed. Part of the reason we feel so helpless and vulnerable is that, six months, in we still don’t know how successful Operation Zarb-e-Azb has been. The ISPR puts a glossy spin in its daily briefings without ever answering the overarching question of whether we have, or ever, can militarily defeat the TTP and its militant allies.
The facts on the ground in North Waziristan cannot change anyone’s entrenched opinions on the wisdom of the operation since no one knows what the facts on the ground are. Our guts tell us after an attack like this that the operation isn’t succeeding, our fury wants us to double down. But we are in no position to know if either proposition is correct.
The media, and by extension the public it serves, deserves a share of the blame. It is understandable, though inexcusable, that the military would try to put the glossiest possible interpretation on the military operation. There is no reason the rest of us, you and I, should have had our attention diverted to the spectacle in Islamabad. We should feel shame but after a moment of introspection we will go back to watching the dharnas, calculating the odds of the government falling.
There is familiarity and comfort there. No one wants to face the reality of what is happening in North Waziristan. Hell, we don’t even know what the reality is. The tribal areas are another country, a country we don’t want to confront. Forget Nero, all of Rome is fiddling while we burn.
The horror in Peshawar became just another spectacle. Children lucky enough to escape with their lives then had to confront another horror: news reporters forcing to relive what they had just endured. The crying parents, the stoic students became more fodder for the almighty ratings. But then what else are we to do? Sitting helpless in our homes we needed an outlet to process what had just happened. When the alternative is blithe indifference it is hard to say what is more uncaring. This attack should not be about our feelings but so powerless are we that feelings are all we have left.
We talk so much about showing the ‘softer’ side of Pakistan – the fashion weeks, the literature festivals, Coke Studio. That’s all there is and its part of us. But this – this horror so unspeakable there is no way to speak about it without tearing up – this is here too. And it is this what makes us a failed state. Forget the uptick in the economy, the little changes in GDP and the spread of mobile phones and the rise in consumer spending.
When anyone in the country can be attacked at any time at any place, when these attacks take place with depressing regularity, we are not a weak state, a fragile state or a rogue state. Repeat after me: Pakistan is a failed state.
Beware the phrase ‘the last straw’. The last straw is a straw man, meant to comfort us into thinking that there are horrors so ghastly we will no longer abide them, that life can no longer continue as before. We have had enough last straws to build a bale of hay.
The straw that broke the camel’s back? Forget about it. Remember the public stoning of a woman in Swat? The market bombing in Islamabad? The church in Peshawar? You could add Malala Yousafzai to that list but too many people feel that attack was deserved/fake/insert your own evil interpretation here.
Nice though it would be to think the slaughter of 145 people, almost all of them children, at the Army Public School in Peshawar will be the last – finally, totally for real this time – straw. It won’t.
The political class acted as if this time was different. Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan rushed to power, with the PTI leader even temporarily setting aside his overwhelming obsession of overthrowing an elected government. Three days of mourning were announced, classes were cancelled and even cable operators said no music and entertainment programmes would be aired. This attack felt different. But feelings have a tendency to pass and end up meaning little if they aren’t acted on.
At the time of writing, the All-Parties Conference the prime minister called is yet to be held. Still, it is unlikely to be anything more than symbolic, an outpouring of grief which cannot plaster over the fact that our political parties rank the militant problem below their usual petty concerns on a list of priorities. They will hold their conference, say all the right things and, like the rest of us, go back to life pre-attack as we have always done before and will keep doing after. Call it resilience or call it selfishness. The end result is the same.
The military’s response too was purely symbolic, although its symbolism tends to be a lot more violent. It carried out a series of air strikes and gave the usual number of militants killed. Part of the reason we feel so helpless and vulnerable is that, six months, in we still don’t know how successful Operation Zarb-e-Azb has been. The ISPR puts a glossy spin in its daily briefings without ever answering the overarching question of whether we have, or ever, can militarily defeat the TTP and its militant allies.
The facts on the ground in North Waziristan cannot change anyone’s entrenched opinions on the wisdom of the operation since no one knows what the facts on the ground are. Our guts tell us after an attack like this that the operation isn’t succeeding, our fury wants us to double down. But we are in no position to know if either proposition is correct.
The media, and by extension the public it serves, deserves a share of the blame. It is understandable, though inexcusable, that the military would try to put the glossiest possible interpretation on the military operation. There is no reason the rest of us, you and I, should have had our attention diverted to the spectacle in Islamabad. We should feel shame but after a moment of introspection we will go back to watching the dharnas, calculating the odds of the government falling.
There is familiarity and comfort there. No one wants to face the reality of what is happening in North Waziristan. Hell, we don’t even know what the reality is. The tribal areas are another country, a country we don’t want to confront. Forget Nero, all of Rome is fiddling while we burn.
The horror in Peshawar became just another spectacle. Children lucky enough to escape with their lives then had to confront another horror: news reporters forcing to relive what they had just endured. The crying parents, the stoic students became more fodder for the almighty ratings. But then what else are we to do? Sitting helpless in our homes we needed an outlet to process what had just happened. When the alternative is blithe indifference it is hard to say what is more uncaring. This attack should not be about our feelings but so powerless are we that feelings are all we have left.
We talk so much about showing the ‘softer’ side of Pakistan – the fashion weeks, the literature festivals, Coke Studio. That’s all there is and its part of us. But this – this horror so unspeakable there is no way to speak about it without tearing up – this is here too. And it is this what makes us a failed state. Forget the uptick in the economy, the little changes in GDP and the spread of mobile phones and the rise in consumer spending.
When anyone in the country can be attacked at any time at any place, when these attacks take place with depressing regularity, we are not a weak state, a fragile state or a rogue state. Repeat after me: Pakistan is a failed state.
