Adil Najam
Militant suicide bombers brought their mayhem and murder to Lahore today. The well-planned terrorist attack has left at least 26 people dead and some 70 injured.
According to Dawn:
A suicide bomber blew himself up among police outside the Lahore High Court building Thursday, killing at least 22 policemen and 4 civilians, and wounding over 70 others, minutes before a planned anti-government protest rally of the lawyers latest reports said.
“There were about 60 to 70 policemen on duty when a man rammed into our ranks and soon there was a huge explosion,” said police officer Syed Imtiaz Hussain who suffered wounds to his legs and groin. TV footage showed at least four mangled bodies on the ground close to a destroyed motorbike and a piece of smoking debris. The blast fired shrapnel as far as 100 meters away. It also shattered windows in the court house and set off volleys of tear gas shells carried by the police, witnesses said. Lahore’s chief of police operations Aftab Cheema said the bomber had run up to a barrier manned by police and blew himself up. He said 20 policemen and two civilians were killed. More than 70 others were wounded, including civilian passers-by, officials said. “It was a suicide attack,” Lahore police chief Malik Iqbal told Dawn News TV adding that 22 policemen died in the attack. He said police were “definitely” targeted.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene of the attack saw the severed head of a man with long hair and beard, possibly that of the suicide bomber. Police constable Jameel Ahmed said the attacker was a man aged about 25 who had arrived outside the court building on a motorbike. “He parked his bike and walked up to the police and blew himself up,” Ahmed said. Police bomb disposal experts estimated the bomb contained up to 14 kilograms of explosive. The police had been deployed in front of the court premises ahead of a weekly lawyers’ protest against the sacking of Supreme Court judges in November. The rally had been due to start about 15 minutes before the bomb went off. About 200 lawyers were inside the High Court at the time of the blast, and others were marching from a nearby district court.
See more videos on vidPK.com
But Lahore, as they say, is Lahore. I guess it was. Lahore is always dearest to me not only because of my own roots in the city but also because it hosted me through my wonderful University days there. It is not that Lahore was unfamiliar to political violence and murder. Far from it. But it has not been in the cross-hair of these suicide murders like many other places were. Now it is.
I have gone through my own connections to all these place as a form of catharsis for myself, but much more than that because even if I sit far away from them today, I take each of these attacks personally. I can feel the hurt, and feel - quite literally - like screaming out in pain. These attacks are not just attacks on cities and people in cities that I am fond of. These are attacks on the principles that I stand for, the ideals that I wish for, and the aspirations that I hope for. These are attacks on me. On my Pakistan. On my Pakistaniat.
I fear that there are too many of us who have internalized the violence. This is “how things are.” We have made ourselves “get used to it.” We have depersonalized the pain. Someone else died; somewhere else. Sad, but life must go on. We have made ourselves numb to the destruction and in the process legitimized the violence of the terrorist with the argument is that somehow the violence was done to make a point.
But that is the point. Violence is never an argument. It is a verdict. There is nothing more pitiful than a society that “gets used to” violence. I fear that this is exactly what is happening to us.
I realize that I have gotten a little carried away in my emotions here. But, maybe, we should all get carried away in our emotions now and then. I know that the hurt and the pain I feel is not just my hurt and pain. It the hurt and pain of far too many Pakistanis. For many it is much much more than my own because they have to live the hurt and pain every day in the neighborhoods they live in.
Maybe we should all take this personally. Maybe we should all not just feel the outrage but express the outrage. And do so without the violence and without the mayhem that the terrorists express their own outrage in. We as a people have to learn somehow to express our hurt without feeling the need to hurt someone else.
Violence feeds not only on the anger of those who are violent, but also on the silence of those who are not. We must not remain silent in the face of systemic violence.
Tina,
I usually try not to comment on my own posts (since I have the privilege of laying out my argument at length in the post it seems unfair to hog up more bandwidth in re-explaining my intent).
In this case, however, if in fact the impression I have given is what you say then I should clarify and say clearly that this was NOT the intent at all. Far from it - very far from it - I went through the list of some of the many cities in Pakistan that have been afflicted with violence and my deep affection for those places to make the point (a) that violence is now everywhere and not somewhere ‘far away’ and (b) that no matter where it is we should consider it personal. The point was quite the opposite to what might have come across to you - my apologies for not making it clear.
The “Lahore is Lahore” statement is not about the importance of violence there but of my own personal fondness for that city; something I have expressed here many times (and, by the way, memories are like children, you can be extremely fond of one for a certain thing without being any less fond of the other for something totally different). It is also about the fact that till now Lahore had not Lahore had not been the focus of suicide attacks. (And the point there is not that Lahore is somehow special, but that this argument that the violence is happening “somewhere else” does not work; no one should consider that anyplace is immune to the senselessness of violence).
If there is any hint, no matter how faint, that violence in Lahore is somehow more important or more tragic than anywhere else, then let me categorically lay that to rest.
There is probably no other topic about which we have written as often and as consistently as against the culture of violence. If indeed we at ATP had ignored violence elsewhere then maybe that would be a justifiable view. But do please follow the links in the post. I hope you will find that our hurt and pain at violence in Rawalpindi, in Swat, in Hub, in Hangu, in Kohat, in Gujranwalla was no less intense than it was in Lahore. But, then, that is the exact point of the post. No matter where, no matter why, no matter to whom and no matter by whom - violence is bad and violence must be condemned.
My sympathies and condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in this madness.
This is terrorism and not the result of intentional acts of “establishment.” We need to be objective in our analysis.
The eleven billion dollars given to Pakistan went in to buying weapons for what the money was intended - i.e. to support defense contractors in the US and not necessarily people of Pakistan. It was also meant to bolster Pakistani defenses and security in view of the spending of its Eastern neighbor.. Yes there is corruption but to say that all of the money went into Musharaf’s pocket is nonsense.
At this stage a caretaker government is the best bet for the nation. Let us hope that sensible heads will prevail in the corridors of power.
ALAS!! Fateh Mohammad, you are exactly the “conspiracy theorist, paranoid Pakistani ” which i refered to in my first comment.
without any truth or credibility, you accused our Army of taking away, “80 %” of the US aid. We didnt get 11 billion, we got 1.2 billions so far. and yes, we do condemn every terrorist act in Pakistan, not just Lahore or karachi. I live in Kohat, and i know, these terrorists first hand, and ordinary people like you, who still think, CIA, Mosad, and ISI are making money out of this.
Hi Adil,
love your posts and, while “Lahore, Lahore aye” is a byword for Punjabis, I’m not very happy about your faint implication that what happens in Lahore is of greater import than what happens elsewhere because of frequent sentimentality people feel towards that city .
So Karachi, Peshawer, and Quetta can see politically motivated death on a daily basis, but hey, as long as Lahore was okay….but now it isn’t any more! Oh my, the tragedy of it all!
See the problem with that reasoning?
Well-to-do Pakistanis have developed a fortress mentality; the cultural and financial elites have declared Lahore and Islamabad no-go areas for fundamentalist thugs (witness the Lal Masajid crackdown), but have decided that terrorists can have the rest of the country (the Taliban operate openly in Quetta and NWFP).
That attitude, rather than the ISI, is going to destroy the country Pakistan.
Dear Mr. Fateh Mohammad, maybe you should read the post itself and note all the cities mentioned there or follow the links in there before you raise the boogey of divisiveness and prejudice. In these divided times such outbursts of ethnic divisiveness is very dangerous and not appreciated.
The owners and adminstrators of this site- as its name “All Things Pakistan” indicates- carry themselves as the ultra-nationalist Pakistanis. Alas there Pakistaniyath doesn’t go beyond Karachi and Lahore. When a bomb-blast took place in Charsadda, NWFP, on the eve of Eid-ul-Azha killing about 170 people, there was no news posted here. But now the blast in Lahore has made a headline here.
As for who is responsible for all this mayham, it is all the doing of Pakistani establsihment. Apart from strategic objectives Pakistani establishment wants to achieve with such projects as Al-Qaueda and Taleban etc., estremism is also a money-making enterprise for Pakistan Army. So far US has given Pakistan Army 11 billion dollars ( most of which has been paid in cash) and out of those 80% has been pocketed by Musharaf and his fellow generals.
It is time that we don’t blind ourselves with the kind of super Pakistaniyath and call a spade a spade i.e. we accept that the Pakistani establishment is the mother and father of extremsim of all forms that is plaguing that region.
[What I am going to say below is directly related to the heart-breaking tragedy in Lahore, although it may not seem so at first]
It is true that the ‘Establishment’ itself is being attacked, as mentioned above. But also unless we ‘point fingers’ we will not begin to know how to confront the problem.
More than ever since 1971, the greatest need was/is national unity (I have used ‘was’ because may be it is too late now–this I say with literally tearful eyes). After the earthquake of 2005 came the unity not seen since the 1971 war (at least in the then-W. Pakistan) but our bunkered-down general did not initiate the much needed political reconciliation. Then things got worse as far as security situation is concerned and then the political situation has been downhill for Musharraf led establishment since March 9, 207.
But the real damage was done on December 27th with Benazir’s murder. A situation which demanded most unity has aggravated to the point that not only the govt. is facing extremist terrorism but also now 3 out of 4 provinces have a chunk of population who are alienated from the central govt and the very concept of ‘Pakistan’. After BB’s murder, it is reported that ordinary Sindhis were stopping buses and were looking for Punjabis/Pashtuns to take revenge against. Imagine the implications of these developments on the future of Pakistan.
A situation has come to the point where eternal hopeful souls like Jang’s Jamiluddin Aali is compelled to say: “Nothing is visible except darkness”.
So, yes, just because parts of the establishment is now being targeted, but that does not absolve the military led establishment its criminal mismanagement of affairs in its undiluted rule of 8+ years. For that heads should roll.
PS. Iran is also next to Afghanistan. Iran is perhaps even more targeted by foreign forces. Iran also took part in the so-called ‘Jihad’ against the Soviets. But Iran manages to be a citadel of peace compared to Pakistan. So let’s come up with excuses of ‘foreign hands’ to explain what is happening in Pakistan.
@ Adnan
You say. “Can you please tell me when Army was blessing for us?”
I say. ” I can tell you. When it developed various prestigious housing schemes in different cities of Pakistan.”