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.
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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.
Since the death of BB everything from burning to looting is well organized. Its like a war. In war enemy goes after infrastructure. Same thing they went for railway stations to Power Plants. Then even Aataa shortage is well planned to hurt Musharraf. This is all sad but real. Hate for Musharraf has blinded some in Pakistan OR to enemy. They are destroying Pakistan just to make Musharraf look bad. Very well planned and well organized.
@tina: re: Revolution
Do you really think it could happen in Pakistan? I seriously doubt it. I think the only “popular revoution” if it ever happens is going to be the one instigated and exploited by the so called religious forces (idiotic and ignorant as they are).
But it won’t be near anything like the Iranian revoution, ie; the intellectual underpinnings of the leaders of the coming religious upheaval are evidently suspect, and these idiots are going to hand our land over to its enemies on a silver platter. These religious morons and their extremist brethren have been played like a cheap lute by the british for the last 250 years at least (exhibit 1: the muslim “jihad” against the sikh power bases, instigated and supplied by…. surprise surprise.. yes, the BRITT.TISH etc…, and gues what, the money they took as war reparations from ranjeet’s successors, they used to kill off guess who? the so called jihadists and also they used it for the afghanistan campaign)
So, our religious leaders are FREAKING RETARDS, and i don’t say it because they are religious, I say it because they are RETARDS and they get played by everyone, and they support every injustice imaginable, and sadly, the pakistani populace kind of looks up to them (to wit: PNA vs Bhutto not that he was a saint)
China got to have its revolution (IMO) because the imperialist thugs were busy fighting it out over the spoils of the ottomon prize. That wasn’t the ony factor, but their distraction helped quite a bit methinks. But no such luck right now.
Iran shows it can be done against all odds, but Iran also shows it is very easy for it to be hijacked by ‘unpleasant’ forces (witness the collapse of the so-called Iranian left post revolution). Pakistan looks ripe for a religious revolution, and _that_ will be allowed to proceed by the junta’s continuous foreign husbands because then everyone can agree that it is okay to bomb the crap out of the country to “secure the nuclear assets” etc. it will also achieve the result of pulverization of the country for futre geo-strategic gains in the next 50 or so years.
And as far as lives being lost, well, Iraqi’s might have been better off had they lost all those lives getting rid of that piece of shit saddam and the exploitative iraqi “establishment” rather than getting blown up by illiterate rednecks from texas on a daily basis.
Which humiliation is worse? having the boot of the foreigner continuously crushing your skull, your men in concentration camps with electrodes up their anuses, and your women out on the street whoring themselves to put food on the table or facing up to the attack-dogs and their foreign masters now? And what does our religious RETARDS protest against? the cartoons The FREAKING CARTOONS!!! (but I digress!)
Incidentally, Iraq and it’s “patriotic elite” followed the same path as our “friends” (not masters of course). They pillaged the country, murdered and bombed and terrorized their own people, fought a proxy war at the behest of their masters, and eventually were disgraced like the lackey mongrels they really were. That was just the couple of deck of cards worth. The rest, allowed to leave, are out of the country and are living quite nicely off their stolen wealth stashes. Ordinary Iraqi’s fate is a different story.
So, what did the ordinary Iraqi’s gain from trying to avoid ‘violence’ and hundreds of thousands of dead? 100 times more violence and millions of dead, and and atomized and pulverized country which is not going to recover for decades (if at all) !
So much for “peace” and not sticking your neck out and all that good stuff.
We should first think about ppl who dies in such attacks. Their compensation package is 1 lakh in NWFP and 3 lakh in Sind.
These young police (or any other)man run their whole family. Their comensation package should be at least 1 million. That will incresae the moral of rest.
Adil bhai how come you thought Lahore will be safe. Pakistan is burning. OBL and his kinds are burning Pakistan and we are sleeping.
http://www.vidpk.com/view_video.php?vid=5843