Mourning the Victims of Terrorism

"We wanted to also send this message that it's not enough for the government to take action against terrorists, but it's equally important that we should also take action against these supporters of the Taliban."
Farzana Bari, Pakistani human rights activist

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  Teachers and students of Pushpagiri School burning the effigy of terrorism in Kadapa on Wednesday. (Right) Social activists stage protest blind-folded in support of Peshawar massacre victims in Ongole on Wednesday.– Photo by Kommuri Srinivas

Social, religious and political backwardness is well established in Pakistan. There is little doubt of the costs associated with upgrading, maintaining and protecting a nuclear arsenal, much less acquiring the latest military equipment and a large standing army in an otherwise impoverished nation. The very fact that Pakistan is such a politically and ideologically unstable country, one that poses a never-ending threat of violence and incipient war to its neighbour India, equally armed with nuclear weapons, speaks to a special pathology.

Pakistan was able for far too many years to partially fund its militaristic focus and exploits thanks to the generosity of the United States which annually gave it billions to enable it to acquire the military hardware it so valued, under the guise that it was all needed to help the coalition it had forged with the United States in a battle against religious extremism otherwise known as terrorism. It did this even as it encouraged that very extremism.

Little wonder that the Taliban, both the Afghanistan and the Pakistan Taliban, have felt so comfortable in Pakistan, which encouraged the former to conduct armed conflict in Afghanistan from its borders, only to find itself having to vigorously protect its own civil society from the malign depredations of its own Taliban. Even in the face of the most recent atrocity targeting a public school operated by the Pakistani Military targeting children for mass slaughter, many in Pakistan sympathize with the Taliban.

There are rising concerns that without the full support of the public, Islamabad will be incapable of fully routing the Taliban. "We  can create a mourning situation at the homes of many army generals and politicians" warned Mohammad Khurassani, a Taliban spokesman. And since among many Pakistanis the Taliban are seen as holy warriors taking up arms only because their government committed to siding with the United States in Afghanistan, full support of government action is lacking.

Seminaries and religious schools throughout the country [many of the madrasses funded by Wahhabist Saudi Arabia], actively promote religious hatred even as some of their clerics are widely respected in Pakistan. In his Friday sermon at the celebrated Lal Masjid mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz warned of a backlash should the government proceed with its threats to resurrect the punishment of execution for Taliban terrorist activity. The Taliban, he preached, are "our brothers", and the military should cease targeting them.

A scant few hundred Pakistanis protested outside the Lal Masjid mosque, for an end to public support for the Taliban. Across Pakistan special classes were held in schools Friday, schoolchildren praying in memory of the Taliban slaughter  of 148 in Peshawar, almost all of them children, when Taliban extremists strapped with explosives entered the school and began firing at the children, throwing explosives into classrooms and setting teachers afire.