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| A blood-splattered class room in the Army Public School, Peshawar |
So snugly does
the idiom fit Pakistan. The terror that it disseminated has now come to haunt
it. Purveyor of terror has now become its victim. And the worst manifestation
of it was the Peshawar tragedy where as many as 145, including 132 children,
were literally gunned down in a mid-morning attack in its Army Public School.
It was said to be in revenge of the killings by Pak Army which has been
conducting military operations against several terrorist groups in North
Waziristan. It was a planned attack by a suicide squad of seven belonging to
the terrorist group Teherik e Taliban Pakistan. With prior knowledge of the lay
of the land they had come only to kill army officers’ children and they
ruthlessly killed as many as they could. That some others, mostly teachers,
were killed in the process was probably incidental. The attack created shock
and awe, not in Pakistan alone but all over the world as this was perhaps the
most barbaric and dehumanised act of terrorists bred in the fertile Islamic
theological seminaries.
Having been the
epicentre of terror it was a sad denouement for Pakistan to have been at the
receiving end of their own terror network. Pakistan was probably enjoying the
show when its terror networks were killing elsewhere. Their boys, radicalised
to the core, were terrorising Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia, China,
South East Asia and, of course India in the name of Allah and the daring brutal
killings of the so-called non-believers was a matter of pride for their
masters. In the process, a number of young and courageous young lads were lost,
so brainwashed were they that they were prepared to give up their life in the
prime of their youth for the cause of spreading the massage of the Prophet.
Running seemingly an assembly line, the merchants of terror, the maulanas,
mullahs and their ilk, have no qualms in readying young children or adolescents
as suicide bombers or “fidayeens” for sacrifice for a cause that is as
preposterous as their progenitors. Hitherto acting on foreign lands, their masters
have now turned their evil eyes inwards on their own people and, what is more,
on fellow Muslims. That they have the support of the Pakistani military in
their endeavours is also a truth and yet the military launched blistering
attacks on the perpetrators of the demonic Peshawar attack killing as many as
120 militants within three days in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA).
Pakistan has had
a violent streak since its inception. Although the country was created for
Muslims who felt they could not live with non-Muslims (read Hindus) yet its
founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah had visualised a secular state. Ironically, he was
at the back of the attack in 1947 on the Valley of Kashmir by Pakistani Army
regulars and other tribal raiders just because a Muslim majority princely state
acceded to a Hindu majority state. He wanted to grab by force whatever did not
come his way in the manner he thought it should have. The violence fostered by
the father of the nation has somehow stuck with the country and it happily
treaded its violent ways down the years. A virtual genocide was launched
against all non Muslims in Pakistan, Hindus getting the best of attention.
Hindus constituted 15% of West Pakistan population when the country came into
existence. By 1998 their strength had come down to 1.6% and today it should be
much less as most of the Hindus have been driven out of the country. A majority
of the Hindu population of Sindh is now in India, harassed as they were by
abductions and then conversions of minor girls, demolition of temples and just
plain killings.
Gen. Zia ul Haq’s advent as the dictator of
the country saw incremental increase in violence. Having been unable to wrest
Kashmir from India in as many as three wars, he planned to bleed India with “a
thousand cuts” – in the shape of terror and proxy war in Kashmir.
Radicalisation of the country and its Army was seen in full play in the 1980s
during the Afghan War where Zia threw in his radicalised Army as also
Mujahideens to assist the local resistance with the financial backing of the
Western Powers to drive the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan. As the Russians
withdrew the mujahideens morphed into two jihadist groups – the Taliban and al
Qaida. It is these two groups which have spread the cult of violence. While al
Qaida is somewhat quiet, the Talibans continue to operate in Afghanistan and in
the FATA along the Afghan border, each distinct from the other with a different
name and not quite aligned. Tehrik e Taliban Afghanistan generally takes on the
government establishments and security forces of Afghanistan and Tehrik e
Taliban Pakistan has earmarked for its operations the FATA region.
The massacre of
the children saw Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan meeting chiefs of all
political parties to arrive at a consensual approach for dealing with the
escalating terror. Obviously the consensus was to deal with the terrorists with
a strong hand and the Prime Minister, a bit carried away, declared that he
would root out terrorism from the country. In fact, earlier he had said that
the entire region had to be rid of the scourge. Whether that happens or not
remains to be seen. In the scheme of things of Pakistan and its Army, the
Taliban working the Western frontiers have become a menace and need to be
liquidated. But that apparently, would not apply to those who operate in
Kashmir and other parts of India. They, after all, are “strategic assets”
nurtured by the Inter-services Intelligence of Pak Army in pursuit of the
planned “thousand cuts”. Called “non-state actors”, they are as much state
actors as any. No wonder the mastermind of 26/11 attack on Mumbai was bailed
out soon after the Peshawar massacre and, despite broad hints to the contrary,
the Pakistani prosecution failed to file an appeal against the court’s orders.
As it appears now, regardless of what happens,
Pakistan, , will not touch Dawood Ibrahim, Lashkar e Toiba and Hafiz Saeed’s
conglomeration of terror organisations. Saeed went about spewing venom against
India, brazenly holding Narendra Modi responsible for the Peshawar attack even
as the dead children were being buried. The intense hatred for India that
permeates the Pak Army, the Pak government and some terror outfits would not
allow dismantling of all terror infrastructures especially created for India.
That would leave Pakistan as Bruce Reidel, Director of Brookings Intelligence
Project said, with the only alternative, “to play patron while bleeding as
victim”. An Indian retired general too had said that keeping snakes in the
backyard and feeding them milk is a sure prescription for getting stung once in
a while. Apparently, only after the loss of many more innocent lives can one,
perhaps, expect Pakistan to change its spots.
Photo: From the Internet
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