A Horribly Blighted Nation

"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females."
"We want them to feel the pain."
Muhammad Khorasani, Pakistani Taliban spokesman

"They opened fire ... and then went out. But very soon they came, broke the doors and entered and again started firing."
"They killed most of my classmates and then I didn't know what happened as I was brought to the hospital."
Khalid Khan, 13, Peshawar Army Public School; school student

Reuters

Safe: A soldier escorts schoolchildren after they were rescued from from the school

"The Pakistani military has never really wanted to launch an all-out war against the TTP; it much prefers to send its troops in every few years and give the TTP [Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan] a bloody nose."
"But today's attack may well have changed the equation. When you go after someone's kids, they tend to take that pretty personally."
Jonah Blank, senior political scientist, RAND Corp., U.S.

Eventually, the Pakistan Armed Forces did manage to evacuate 960 people from the school building under attack by the Pakistani Taliban. Whose seven well-armed and motivated attackers wearing Pakistani Military uniforms were able to bypass gated security to make their way with the use of a ladder to a side entrance of the school, access the auditorium and begin their shooting spree, indiscriminately discharging their weapons at school staff and children unmercifully.

The death toll was 132 students of all ages, and at least nine staff members, and many others wounded. One hundred died in the auditorium alone. Boys and girls are taught in separate buildings, and as the attackers roamed from hallways to classrooms they shot dead anyone they could see while military gunships hovered above the school, unable to act, in the knowledge of hostages within. Wounded arrived in convoy after convoy of ambulances and in the Combined Military Hospital dead students lined the hallways, placed in white body bags.

AFP PHOTO / Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan    The Taliban fighters who allegedly stormed the Peshawar school.

By 6:30 p.m., after six hours, the attackers were dead. Some of them were killed by the army, some committed themselves voluntarily to martyrdom by detonating suicide vests, in the process slaughtering more children. And nor were they finished, even in death, having left behind them bombs to deter those entering the school, mandating caution in the evacuation of the wounded. This is a hard lesson in the old adage of as ye sow so shall ye reap.

It is very well known that the Pakistani intelligence services have long worked alongside militant groups, and were in fact well infiltrated by fanatical Islamists. Their determination to wreak havoc in Afghanistan and India ensured that the terrorist groups were well shielded by the military and the intelligence services who not only turned a blind eye to their actions, but actively promoted them, all the while declaring they were champions of the war on terrorism. It is where Osama bin Laden found haven in Abbottabad, his family compound in close proximity to an elite officers' training compound.

Pakistan's government covertly encouraged the Afghan Taliban, helping to train, arm and motivate them, and when they achieved government in Afghanistan, recognized their legitimacy. Once they were routed by Western invading forces led by the U.S. and NATO with the blessing of the United Nations, to route the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they were given safe haven in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which also sheltered al-Qaeda.

Their actions stimulated the birth of the Pakistani Taliban, partially motivated when General Musharraf charged the military with the assault on the Red Mosque, home to fanatical Islamists who were also championed by Tribal Chiefs in the Swat Valley and elsewhere, who shared their fanatical Islamist ideology. Himself an Islamist, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who once negotiated with the Taliban and Tribal Chiefs now vows to take revenge against them.

"We will take revenge for each and every drop of our children's blood that was spilled today", he stated, ordering three days of national mourning for the attack representing a "national tragedy unleashed by savages". Pakistan, in fact, is a savage place, where laws threaten Christians with mortal punishment in claims that they insult Islam or the Prophet, and similar laws are brought into force should Muslims attempt to convert to Christianity.

Pakistan's love affair with conflict against those neighbours it considers enemies, does not reflect kindly upon it as a civilized nation. The fact that this destabilized country is in possession of a nuclear arsenal gives scant comfort to those imagining a future conflict with India when Pakistani passions lead to conflict resulting from its constant state of paranoia. Pity the children of Pakistan where hill tribes murder health workers attempting to inoculate them against dread disease.

Pity the children of Pakistan where fanatical Islamist groups destroy schools, declaring them to be hotbeds of Western ideas and ideals, damaging the minds of Pakistan's children