Afghan Press Author: Rooh-ul-Amin

Something is there which makes most of us very gloomy each night that covers the day and the dawn that chases the night. The thing, which keeps us gloomy, is not else than the reality that we have lost a sense of direction and a huge doze of violence given in media has turned us into lethargic.

If one keeps watching our local news channels long enough, or starts reading news papers one starts to look at these episodic suicidal bombings, and kidnappings, as something quite normal.

Suicidal bombings in remote areas resulting in a few deaths have already been relegated to the inside or back pages of newspapers and tickers on electronic media. We have reached the nadir where mobile snatching and routine kidnappings are not even news worth printing or telecasting.

We wake up for a few hours from our slumber after an incident that shakes the power centers like Punjab and Islamabad but never think about the plight of people who are living in the whole tribal belt, particularly in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur and Swat. The militants have turned our lives into an inferno and the presence of Pakistan’s security forces has meant indefinite curfews and futile operations against its own civil population. Much has been written, read, heard and seen about it but nothing turned me so melancholic as the detention of police bus that was taking prisoners which lefts seven dead among schoolgirls who were on the way back their homes in upper Dir. What was their crime no body can satisfy their parents? According to some reports even the passersby blinked away tears at this tragic incident. With in ten days it is the seventh incident starting from one targeting Awami Ntional Party leader Asfandyar Wali right after1st day of Eid, who survived it but lost his on of his faithful guards with second at Bakkar aimed at Akbar Naiwni an MNA from Pakistan Muslim League-N at the hands of a religious zealot while like the former he also survived it but ended in the senseless death of 22. The truly frightening aspect of the recent spate of suicide attacks is that there is no end in sight. Yesterday’s suicide attack at Orakzai grand jirga that mowed down more than 112 people with one in Islamabad police line that shook the Capital once agins. But the upper Dir incident loomed large in the minds of public because it was a strange incident of it own odd nature. The scattered organs of the schoolgirls opened the floodgates of melancholy but only across the same ill-fated land, which is responsible for reaping the outgrowth of the seeds of terror sown by some one else. I am not an escapist of realities but confessing that this part of the land supported Talibnisation but brought and fabricated by Generals from power center Islamabad with the intrigues of global belligerent US. The back month I was to meet with a minister at Islamabad and the police attitude was discriminatory with a person of the same nationality but on the grounds belonging to the now- gangrenous-region FATA.

Looking at the intensity of terror one can claim that in destruction and suicide bombings Pakistan towered above Afghanistan and Iraq—the two war-torn-countries still under the military hegemony of the same foreign aggressor US.

There the enemy is known but here the enemy is obscured with no foreign aggression. No body can say with surety that he will come back home when he steps out. Leave others aside, at length the epitome of innocence and love the nascent girls fell prey to the savages’ target in upper Dir. If a country’s anti-terrorism squad or police line, which is an emblem of security for public, is not safe, what a person living in a slum can do for safety then. The matter is quite convoluted, for the three segments of the society (Taliban, the government or politicians and the public) are fumbling in abysmal depths of darkness to seek way out.

Taliban want to establish the empire of dreams on the ruins while the politicians have turned a deaf ear to public grievances who are seemingly indulged in paving the hurdles but covertly more concerned on their own security measures. For the purpose they have been using anti-dynamite and bulletproof vehicles with a legion of security personnel for which a developing country like Pakistan, rearing on foreign aids, is not in the position to sustain it more. It has widened the already existent social cleavage more than ever between the politicians and the public. The provincial minister for agriculture Arbab Ayub Jan, before elections used to loiter in Tarnab Farm during daily evening walk but now for him that is a no-go-area without his security guard. Because during fasting month of Ramadhan two suspected or would-be suicide attackers were arrested from Tarnab Farm that were likely to kill a high profiled target. It is not only NWFP that is prone for terrorists but rather they have access to their target across Pakistan and this the reason that the politicians think if the terrorists weed them out then who will run the state affairs as we have already experienced one such case that because of famine of politicians we are waiting for an adolescent to be adult and to rule us.

The teenager is not other than Bilawal Bhutto Zardri. The third segment of the society itself is public, standing at the cross roads thinking which path it should go. The most prone in the whole game of blood is the public, specially the middle and lower class.

When ever there is news coverage on media relating to violence one can see the outnumbering ratio of these poor people gored to death.

The elite in this country has written it off. They may be living here but have already invested heavily abroad, and can thus leave at a short notice. The common man (and woman although there may be fewer on the streets nowadays) who does not know how to survive? He is constantly counting his dirty and pan-stained currency bills rolled into his sweaty palm. But for all, who is blameworthy and why are we going through this topsy-turvy path?

The military Generals, politicians or even the entire nation is?

The Generals and policymakers with the actual abet of politicians who have been associated with supporting these militant forces since 1979 should be awarded for creating this unprecedented mess with no exemption of the nation. But today the entire nation is going now through the route of rout because the nation with just a call from bigoted religious mentors, entered into the war of US, USSR and China with a lavish aid from America and accomplice of the then-till-now government of Pakistan but without thinking its repercussions on its own country.

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