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.
I hardly agree with Adil’s point of view but I do disagree with the Professor that this post had something to do with Lahore only. Kindly don’t bring Punjabi vs Non-punjabi thingie in such volatile situation. Zardari Bhutto and Pervaiz Bhutto Musharraf are enough for such extreme things.
Interesting information on faces behind attacks, parts of establishments are fighting itself now.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSIS L112538
I was just thinking about those poor policemen who are used by the government as a human shield against these terrorist. I think majority of the people, representing one group, who died in these terrorist attacks are medium and small ranked security officials who normally belong to poor families. These young unsung heroes leave their poor families and children to face the realities of this poor world.
It is hard to know that a head clerk who died in Lahore blast was returning to his office after lunch break as he went to feed the pigeons on a nearby shrine during break.
We are passing through a terrible time, where none of us is secure and there seems a huge gap in national consensus to deal with this situation. Terrorists are blowing human bombs and are succeeding in their agenda to shatter and traumatize this society. They hardly care that the innocent and poor people are suffering. Government on the other hand is unable to control their activities even by applying immense force in tribal areas and Sawat Valley.
I think it is the nation who will suffer or SOLVE this problem. Unless we have government fulfilling the aspirations and basic needs of the people, institutions working for public good and an image that we are fighting this war against terrorism for us not for U.S, we cannot overcome this menace with a leadership which has lost the trust of people in general.
I agree with Adil, unless we are not going to feel the level of atrocities which the poor people are facing in this bloodshed, we can never stop this horrific violence.
We need not to let these few terrorist hijack our whole nation with trauma and suffering.
I hope all the political leaders will set their differences aside and join hands in condemming terrorism that is spreading like cancer in our country and is likely to kill the nation.
In the past the govt has tried to blame the victims of terrorism instead of admitting its failure to provide security.
It is time that people hold their rulers accountable before we become a failed state.
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.