140 dead and 538 injured - this little byline cuts through hearts and our future!
Yesterday was the day of images - moving pictures of excitement, energy, applause and then the saddest of recent tragedies. Innocent men and women charged with emotion and enthusiasm were blown away by suicide bombers, remote devices and alien belief systems. Or was it the case of wilful machinations and deceit. Only time will tell.
She had arrived much like the Greek characters - tearful, maligned, triumphant and a little pawn in the hands of gods. Amid the voices of criticism and hypocrisy that fail to note the complexity of our times, she emerged as a people’s woman - once again. Here were the loyalists dancing, singing and clapping - their queen, exiled and beaten had re-emerged.
They couldn’t care about the cost or the process. That was for the armchair classes of Pakistan to ponder about. The pull of Bhutto-name for the have-nots was once again re-established. So began a journey on the blood-lined roads of Karachi that have cracked with violence, blood and lawlessness. Yet they moved ahead oblivious of the fault lines that run from the drab, destroyed villages of Afghanistan to Karachi passing through a web of seminaries, officialdom and Lal Masjids of this world.
And so halfway, this peaceful journey - a testament of what the real Pakistan is all about - halted. And, something had erupted: imperial projects, state diktats and the crumbling centre. There was flesh, blood, fire and tears. And the wretched TV screens have documented all of this.
Devastating is one word that replaced amazing by the time we crossed the midnight in Pakistan! To quote Rumi here
A splinter is often
difficult to get out.
How much more difficult a thorn
in the heart! If everyone could find that thorn
in themselves, things would be
much more peaceful here!
There is a head now flashed on the screens - they can’t tell if it was a Jiyala or the suicide bomber. The TV channels are flashing bodies again and again – as before, discretion was thrown to winds and we have the singular honour of being a country where human limbs and guts of the dead are not just flashed but imposed on the senses until you are numb, exhausted and terrified. And, glorifying terror is the last thing we need.
Urooj Zia, a newspaper reporter was there:
“The bomb blasts happened while we were there. I was stunned, to say the least. There were people, bits of people, blood EVERYWHERE. An AryOne World cameraman lay there dying in front of us. We moved him to a police mobile, but he died in the hospital. I knew he would. I got his blood all over me — my hands, arms, clothes, shoes. Then there were charred bodies of policemen — smoke rising from them. Slippery blood everywhere….I went back to work after that, filed my story. Got home around 04:00 a.m., couldn’t sleep for two hours coz I couldn’t get the images out of my head. Puked a couple of times too.”
This tragedy is not just about who is responsible for this carnage. When humanity is in danger, we have to rise above our biases and loyalties and condemn what is WRONG. This is an issue that we all have to now live and deal with.
Our religion does not allow targeting women even in wartime and suicides are FORBIDDEN. Period. There is now a consensus at Al-Azhar and various other places of Islamic scholarship. If this is about Waziristan or the Lal Masjid then it should be fought elsewhere and not against the unarmed, dispossessed political workers.
All Pakistanis have to unite in condemning this barbarity. And all variants of Pakistaniat ought to be involved in this process – bickering at this stage will only make us question as to what message are we sending to the world, that we to quote Qandeel Shaam are “multiple little groups all bopping their heads against one another”?
Violence, militancy and suicide attacks are and will remain unacceptable. Legitimate politics must not give way to war-lord-ism! I end with Faiz:
abhii chiragh-e-sar-e-rah ko kuchh Khabar hii nahin
abhii garaani-e-shab mein kami nahin aaii
najaat-e-deeda-o-dil kii ghadi nahin aii
chale chalo key wo manzil abhii nahin aaii
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Beanzir’s niece , Fatima Bhutto very aptly summed it up–She told Agence France -presse. ” that my aunt’s need for “personal theatre ” had resulted n the deaths of many Pakistanis”.
I wish Benazir was a citizen of a civilised democratic country where she would have been tried for murder for endangering the lives of so many innocents when she was repeatedly told that there were chances of suicide bombers disrupting her cavalcade. Despite all the warnings she choose to do the Tamasha at the cost of innocents.
Reminds me of an “Afsana” by Rubina Faisal of Toronto on her recent visit to Pakistan. ” Roti Khati Moortian” . all of us do eat and drink but we are still “Moortian “in the hands of these corrupt politicians who are now coming back to plunder us again in the name of democracy.
they are not champions of demoracy– Aung San Su Ki of Burma is … She has spent the last 21 years of her life in home detenton in Rangoon, not running away to live in their palaces abroad.
Please don’t be fooled by their theatrics– they are the same people who ran away leaving us at the mercy of Generals and are now coming back and shaking hands with the same generals — Remember this is the same army which killed her father, but she would do anything to get a chance to plunder us again….
This blog is blocked now,
150 PPP militants were massacred and given to
progressivist Balidan to Kali, what value for human
life, will be forgotten very very soon.
Excellent Post! What a tragedy. but we have to note that Bb was warned well ahead in time. She could have chosen a low profile arrival. 150 innocent lives gone!
Its All About unrestricted CASH FLOWS & Human DISPENSABILITY:
According to PILDAT (www.pildat.org) there are speculations that PPP spent huge sums of money estimated to range from Rs. 300 to 500 Million for the mobilization of PPP workers and sympathizers at her Karachi Airport reception.
The other COST is in terms of Human Lives lost or the COLLATERAL DAMAGE DUE TO BB: 140 PEOPLE DEAD. PAKISTAN’S 160 MILLION PEOPLE GET READY TO BECOME BB’s COLLATERAL DAMAGE
“Then consider the wisdom or otherwise of staging an event of this magnitude in the current security environment. The bombers had already advertised their intent and they have a track record of doing exactly what they say they will do. Why, knowing that not only the life of the target was at hazard but also the lives of those who become collateral damage did nobody stop and think for a moment? Think about the duty of care they had to the people of the nation? Think of minimizing the risk to the common man? But nobody, not in a month of Sundays, was ever going to do that, were they? Instead, in true barnstorming style, the decision was made to enter with trumpets – playing straight into the hands of the waiting bomber, and giving into the hands of the police and security services the ultimate impossible job.
Finally, consider now Dear Reader just who it was that really failed on that dreadful night. Ask yourself who failed and then ask the same question of those who decided to offer your throat to the wolf”.
Nope! These are not my words; they are Chris Cork’s in his opinion column in “The News”:
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=765 69
Actually, Chris, that is the one question we must never, never ask; not on this blog at least. Here, like ostriches, we should keep our heads firmly stuck in the sand.
And someone says “disgusting” is not the “right” word to use. Its not just the “thinking” that should be put under lock and chain; there is also only a certain quota here, per the dictionary, for how one is permitted to “feel”.
jamhUriyat ke daur mayN kyA apni rA’e dEN
jo sab kahEN ge hum bhi kahEN ge uThA ke hAth
samajee mistree: jeetay rahiye! Despite your protests, I support moderation - the comments here are important - as reflections of what our educated think, how civilized they are; and what image of Pakistan we are presenting on the Internet.
But, I do agree with you ke history ka samnaa karnay ki taab naheen ham mein se aksar logon ko - ya woh history se bilkul na-balad hain..
Salaam arz hai
Adaab arz, Raza saheb. Social Mistri is moderated at will by the zaalim administration. Therefore, my comments are first inspected by the ATP equivalent of the TSA for the innocuousness of their payload before being allowed to show up in this hallowed forum. I think a reference I made in a recent comment to an early part of Islamic history when a fatwa was used to justify an indefensible act rankled them somehow.
Yahi to rona hay, ham abhi tak historical facts pay bhi nahien muttafiq ho sakay.
I could only read Social Mistri’s comment now - I am in complete agreement with him [her] - that is the dangerous point part: so much violence becoming a part of our national lives..