Adil Najam
Once again our eyes swell up, our hearts miss a beat, our body shakes in shock and anger, and the banality of mayhem hits us in the gut, as the enemies of Pakistan continue on their killing spree. 23 Pakistanis are dead in Lahore in today’s dastardly attack already. More remain in critical conditions.
We have been here before: here and here and here and here and here here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and it seems everwhere. One cannot bear to count any more. One shudders to think. Just how many Pakistanis will be slaughtered by the beasts who do this before their hatred is satisfied?
According to Dawn:
LAHORE: Gunmen detonated a car bomb near police and intelligence agency offices on Lahore’s Fatima Jinnah road Wednesday, killing 23 people and wounding more than 100, officials said. At least four men with rifles stepped out from the car and opened fire on the intelligence agency building, then set off a massive blast when security guards returned fire, officials said.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik suggested the attack could be retaliation for the government’s military offensive to rout Taliban militants from the northwestern Swat Valley. Wednesday’s attack was the third major strike in Lahore in recent months. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest bombing. Police said one suspect was detained.
… The explosion sheared the walls off buildings in a main business district. TV footage showed bleeding bystanders and emergency workers carrying the injured toward ambulances. ‘The moment the blast happened, everything went dark in front of my eyes,’ witness Muhammad Ali said. ‘The way the blast happened, then gunfire, it looked as if there was a battle going on.’ Sajjad Bhutta, a senior government official in Lahore, told reporters that a car carrying several gunmen pulled up in a street between offices of the emergency police and the Inter-Service Intelligence.
‘As some people came out from that vehicle and starting firing at the ISI office, the guards from inside that building returned fire,’ he said. As the firing continued, the car suddenly exploded, he said. The ISI and police buildings were both badly damaged. An AP reporter saw dozens of troops entering the ISI building to supervise the rescue work, while gunshots were heard from inside the building even one hour after the blast. Television footage showed officers dragging a black-shirted man from the scene.
Malik blamed the attack on militants that government forces are fighting in the Swat Valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas near Afghanistan. ‘These terrorists were defeated in FATA and Swat and now they have come here,’ he told reporters.
How much of this is related to teh operation going on in FATA and Swat and how much is a continuation of what has been happening month after month and week after week is unclear, but what is very clear is that, as always, Pakistanis die, Pakistanis cry.
What an idiotic reaction to the mayhem by the so called leaders. They call it a war against Paky terrorists and then condemn retaliation to it mechanically. They wage jehad for liberation in Kashmir and then protest against violation of human rights when even they claim those killed in jehad having been sent to heaven as ‘shaheed’.
I think we can stop this mayhem only if we discard hypocritical, sectarian and ‘zarraari’ (divisive, takfiri) Islam, preached by the Mullah and listen to Bulleh Shah, who had, three centuries ago, said:
“Masjid dhaa de, mandir dhaa de, dhaa de jo kujh dhendaa
Ik bande da dil nah dhaavein, Rab dilaan wich rehnda”
(Raze the mosque, raze the temple, raze whatever you can
But don
Who are the enemies of Pakistan ? Is there any honest pakistani who will admit that it is the ISI and CIA who is the real enemy of pakistan ?
Everbody know that the Taliban was the creation of mullah-infested ISI. They are students of Maulana Samiul Haq’s madressah system. It was funded by CIA.
They were created by ISI to take control of Afghanistan, at the expense of all the non-Pashtun people of Afghanistan.
The strategy has back-fired on the creators, and now the poor common Pakistanis are paying the price.
Why are pakistanis surprised by this ? Did they think that their security agencies would keep fueling extremism in other parts of the world without being burnt themselves ?
Unless Pakistani people takes control of ISI and Army and have a truly democratic system where the people rule – dont expect anything different. The same old same old….
Lets have another migration on the pattern of 1947, except this time it will be within the same country. People willing to live under the govt of terrorists Taliban can opt to live in Swat and the muslims who are completely against these terrorists can choose to move out of Swat and into Pakistan.
Once this migration is complete, Swat should be announced as an independent territory and should be renamed as ‘Wahabistan’.
Some salient feature of Wahabistan would be:
Number of school for girls: 0
Number of lady doctors: 0
Number of women dying because the country has no lady doctors and no male doctor is allowed to see them: Very High
Number of polio cases: Very high (as no one is allowed to have this vaccination, because, supposedly its a western conspiracy to make muslims impotent.)
Number of scientists: 0 (Only religious education will be imparted to boys in madrasshas, authorizing suicide bombings, desecrating dead bodies, etc. )
Once these terrorists are given their own country i.e. (Wahabistan), hopefully, then the rest of the Pakistan will be able to live in peace.
My sincere condolences to Pakistanis for the tragedy that they are facing. Innocent people, no matter which faith they belong to, do not deserve this kind of injustice. It is a good thing that Pakistanis are turning against terrorism themselves that they used to support or turn a blind eye to in the past.
I see Wahabbi radicalism being blamed for today’s condition. However, I’d like to point out the true reason behind all this:
1. Pakistani military establishment. Ever since Ayub Khan, Pakistan has been dominated by the military and all resources have been directed towards the upgrade of the military and the paychecks of its officers.
2. Zia Ul Haq – It was Zia who set the ball rolling for Sharia law and orthodox Islam in Pakistan. Pakistan’s military began to get filled with religious minded personnel during his time. Prior to that Pakistani military was modeled on the British system and was above all the religious influence. What was injected then, has come to fruition now.
3. Short sighted policies. Instead of focusing on national development, too much of resources and energy were focused on India, Kashmir etc and every decision was made from the context of these two. Pakistan’s involvement in the cold war geo-politics was to befriend the US and gain advantage over India. It is all right to be cautious about other countries, but Pakistan went a little too far. India has managed to progress well and Pakistan has begun to collapse.
4. Pakistan should not have interfered in the cold war between the US and the USSR. If the US wanted to take on the Soviets, may be Pakistan could have allowed them to use their bases and got financial rewards for it. But Zia allowed the US to encourage radical Islam to fight the Soviets. When their objective was achieved, US left the region and Afghanistan fell into a rubble.
5. Creating the Taliban to stabilize Afghanistan and use it as a strategic depth against India is a very short sighted policy. Pakistani military generals have misled the country by creating a monster out of India and taken away all resources in building war trenches against India.
6. India is a nuclear power and is a large country. Engaging it by means of a covert proxy war will not bleed it. Instead Pakistan’s resources were drained.
7. Sticking with Taliban, encouraging Al Qaeda etc were wrongful sins. Pakistan is fully responsible for these carcinogens to grow in the region.
8. Allowing Taliban and Al Qaeda to escape and settle in Waziristan when the US bombed them out of Afghanistan is another short sighted policy. The reason was not to lose the strategic edge over India in the future, when the Americans would leave.
Well, the Americans have not left. And their regime has changed hands. They have pressed Pakistan to fight the Taliban and now we see disaster everywhere.
I hope Pakistanis cleanse their country of all terrorist elements, not just the Taliban. They are like snakes. They multiply and will bite your own very hands if they feel trapped. They need a war all the time to breed. Get rid off them and get rid off your generals. Work towards strong civilian leadership and democracy. If Pakistanis do not fight these monsters that their rulers have created, the country faces a very dangerous future. Hope wisdom prevails.
Well what we are missing as part of solution is a strong leader. We need another Bush in Pakistan which can announce
“Either you are with Taliban or with Pakistan”.
We need to crackdown not just millatant but Dewbandi madrassahs in Southern Punjab. We have to “Shut-up” apologist like Imran Khan or Hamid Mir.
It is time to show our resolve. We should take example from Sri Lanka. These Talibans talks in language of bullet and thats the language we have to respond.