“Taliban Aa Gayay”: Silence of the Lambs

Posted on April 20, 2009
Filed Under >Samad Khurram, Law & Justice, Politics, Religion, Society
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Sammad Khurram

Back in 2002, I was returning from Friday prayers when I saw an unusual gathering of singing and quasi-dancing Mullahs. Unusual because I had always assumed Mullahs to be against all types of art. The amused crowd were listening to chants of “Taliban aa gayay, Taliban aa gayay.”

I smirked. As if!

Pakistan is a nuclear country with the seventh largest army. We’re safe.

The Mullahs’ songs have been answered – the Taliban indeed are coming. And with them the cowards are bringing a lifestyle that destroys everything Pakistan and Islam.

Oh no. Wait! “This guy is on the paycheck of those who are trying to break Pakistan. Taliban are heroes, its America which is wrong.” Yes, this is the typical self defense mechanism coming to full force. Having nothing to lose, and having been already declared a CIA agent earlier in life I suppose I’ll continue. Continuing with a genuine fear, that these words are falling on either deaf or hostile ears. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Pakistan is over if all this chaos continues.

Jinnah’s Pakistan is a dream gone wrong. Perhaps if he knew that the dreamland for living in peace, harmony, religious tolerance and freedom was going to become arena for public flogging where laughs of sadist barbarians and the screams of minors will echo, he would not have decided on creating it. Had he known that there would be more suicide bombs in his country than any other place in the world, where fundamentalists would go around the cities threatening women, where school children would have to undergo security protocols as if they were in a war zone, would he have even bothered to work for the green and white?

Still, Pakistan is not what we worry about. All our esteemed talk shows chatter on is whether there should be 17th Amendment or not and on the statements by America and India. Yes, American drones and Indian statements are a threat to our sovereignty. Yes, the balance of power is important. But even when the Taliban have killed more people than India, American Drones or our tyrant rulers, taken over more of our land and have made us feel more unsafe than anyone else in the past thirty years? What other definition of sovereignty is there than protection of lives and property of people, maintaining writ of the state across the territory and having people feel secured? Why can’t we have some programs discussing the atrocities of the Taliban, the acts of terror that they do and how they have destroyed Pakistan?

No, it’s the “Hindu Zionists” (notice the contradiction?) working on a CIA sponsored conspiracy to break Pakistan. There are the good Taliban who fought the Kuffar off and the real issue is the CIA. Apparently, everyone has all the time in the world to devise every action we do, plan it to perfection and then make the evidence of their involvement disappear. Are we really that important for the rest of the world to worry about when they have their own countries and problems to tend to? Even if the Taliban are foreign funded should does that not mean we should double our efforts? Remember when India briefly occupied few territories near Lahore in 1965 how the whole country ran to defend it? My grandfather had stories of people going with sticks to support the army. I am afraid I will not have any such stories of patriotic resistance to tell anyone when another enemy has taken control of a fourth of NWFP and roughly one twentieth of Pakistan. Perhaps we should ban “Yeh watan tumhara hai, tum ho pasban is kay” for it seems no one really care about Pakistan, except the Zionist Hindus of course.

But no, remember the glorious days of the Caliphs? Remember the great Pakistani Fauj, who under the Ameer-ul-Momineen, Zia–ul–Haq, crushed the Russians? This is only a plan to make America taste the same fate! For a nation which already lives in denial, these conspiracy theories are all we need to turn us completely schizophrenic. Army is great and it will deal with any task assigned to it. More of the same comes from everyone turning patriotic everywhere. This automatic knee-jerk mechanism has seeped in our blood and shut off our brains.

For the love of God can anyone explain me why the great Army of Allah, whose laurels we sing from the day we are born, has still not been able to jam radio stations pouring terror in Swat? Have the core commanders not even tried asking the army engineers how radios work and how easy it is jam them without even having to be in the line of fire? Can they not even figure out if they only played “Who let the Dogs out” at the frequencies the Taliban use it would stop this vitriol? Why is it that these Taliban leaders can appear before journalists in broad daylight and roam freely without any trouble even when they claim responsibility of attacking Pakistanis across the country?

Perhaps the real question I should ask is why do I even care?

When I took time off from Harvard to be part of the lawyers’ movement I had seen a ray of hope. There were concerned citizens and lawyers who stood for what was right no matter what the consequences. We fought for a principle and won with the hope that things will slowly improve. Today the very judges we had faith in released the cleric of Lal Mosque whose crimes everyone knows about. If the judiciary was going to release people whose crimes were recorded on TV perhaps it does explain why Taliban are spreading like an incurable cancer. Imagine who would be hanging in “khooni chowk” had Mullana Abdul Aziz kidnapped a few Taliban officials or fought against them and killed their men?

Yet when you think all’s over, somehow someone comes up. Someone whose name keeps your head from drowning. Perhaps this sick torture has to be long and painful where we chase mirages of oasis, never to really reach them. Perhaps for all the atrocities we have committed to our own people require us to be made an example of so no other nation follows our path. Why do ray of hopes like Afzal Khan, who has socked it up to Taliban and refused to be removed from Swat alive, appear every now and then? However he stands to die in the rain. Alone.

Can anyone please name one Pakistani leader who has said the same? Forget that has anyone Pakistani leader said that he will go and get the Taliban to give up their arms? Will the real leader who can get rid of these monsters stand up? Imran Khan? Qazi? Nawaz Sharif? This silence is criminal!

What’s worse that these leaders of ours have unanimously approved a state within a state run, which is not accountable to anyone, absolves all crimes of the Taliban and gives a safe haven to those who are there to kill us? What sort of a Nizam-e-Nonsense is this when no one even tried to debate the issue properly and even consider for a second that giving blanket amnesty to the Taliban might not, even if it be infinitesimal, the right thing to do? No for the politicians this does not matter. All they are interesting in mudslinging at each other and more ministries. Our media and sheeple are busy devouring the latest gossip while Pakistan burns.

But unlike what people think it will not be because of Zardari’s corruption or Gilani’s incompetence or Salman Taseer’s antics.  We have survived them in the past, and so we’ll do again. But any country that falls to the Taliban will never recovered.

The Taliban are here to stay and unless we stand up against them in every possible way Pakistan will be lost – for good! It will be the silence of the lambs which destroys us. You will be responsible if Pakistan fails.

Sammad Khurram is a student at Harvard University and turned down an award from the US ambassador as a mark of protest against killings of Pakistani soldiers by US drone attacks.

169 responses to ““Taliban Aa Gayay”: Silence of the Lambs”

  1. ShahidnUSA says:

    Pakistani govt. must listen to balochis point of view even if it is an extreme one, instead of killing their leaders. Bad bad example.
    About Talibans issue. If you raise and observe a child in a deserted island, after 20 years you would notice that child who is grown up now has more animalistic behavior than civilized.
    Talibans are the ignored and neglected children of yesterday, who have become the product of Mullahs “sick fantacies”.

    “khooni chowk” is a message from Taliban that dont show any mercy on us because we did nt to anyone who has different point of view than us.
    I suggest complete psycological counciling to any child who witnessed the “khooni chowk”.

  2. fahad says:

    @aamir

    When did democracy become a yardstick to measure anything.

    Hitler was elected in a completely democratic election. China has never seen democracy. And we all know what elections in pakistan are all about. They have nothing to do with ideology or good governance. Votes are cast based on baradari, thats the reason why the islamists are so popular in the streets but never get votes. The people of pakistan don’t know what voting is all about.

    The last time i was in pakistan i was hearing amazing tales of swift justice given by the taliban. The taliban support on the street was tremendous. The comparison with robin hood is quite true.

    Lately i had the displeasure of meeting Stephen Cohen. He was acting like an expert on pakistan but had no idea what the hell was going on. After failing to answer my numerous questions on pakistan and exposing his shallow thinking, i was politely booted out of the conference room. If US foreign policy is determined by these closed minded fake intellectuals who have mastered the art of bullshitism then no wonder the US is failing so badly internationally. Our pseudo intellectual self serving elites are taught by these very same people in US universities.

    And has anyone studied in a madressa? Do you know that i visited a madressa in mansehra and they were teaching philosophy there. I even found books on hegel and nietzche there. People are allowed to disagree aswell.

    Harvard is comparable to any madressah in pakistan. Their methods for brain washing are just slightly more subtle. I am not talking about technology but social sciences.

    Here is an experiment to prove that harvard is just as close minded as any madressah. Try to act like an al qaida supporter or a taliban supporter at harvard and see the reaction. I have acted like a US supporter in many madressahs in pakistan and what resulted was a healthy debate.

  3. jk says:

    Taliban are only a force to be reckoned by the pak army who are failing pakistan.

    This whole issue is very fishy.

  4. Mazhar says:

    hi
    In pakistan our basic problem is to educate the people in right way according to humanity basis not according to relogeous basis. if we are a good human then we will be good muslim but most of us think that if we are good muslim then we will be good human. this is wrong perception first of all think about your country your people’s development, their independence, their education, work hard for the betterment of the country and prove that we are a nation who can develop their country then preech your thinkings and teechings of islam when world see that we are a powerful nation.if you beat women, you bann girls education, you threaten people and other things like that but you are not developed you need money from other countries and your country run by the foriegn aid then how can you face the world?

  5. Akbar says:

    Islam is not homogenous – the majority of Pakistan’s people do not subscribe to Taliban’s version of “Islam”.

    Wahabis (the sect to which Taliban belong) are less than 5 percent of the Pakistani population, although they receive massive foreign aid from Saudi Arabia (the world’s only Wahabi regime).

    Barelvis comprise over 60 percent of the population.

    It is absolutely not possible for a micro-sect to rule over the majority of the Pakistani population. This must not be allowed at any cost. The Army must take notice of this demographic reality when formulating their defence strategy.

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