An ode to the ordinary 2017

There was a time when we could walk into hotels and hospitals alike without security scanning machines. Now even to take children to a park, one must go through security checks. It is sadly the way of our world now. But while Pakistan fights this war, we lose heroes in the form of the ordinary woman and man. This article is merely reminiscence and a tribute to them. There is no better way, in my opinion, to start the New Year than to remember and salute the tenacity of the most valuable asset this country has forgotten, it has — the ordinary person.

It is a tribute to the ordinary person, and their ordinary lives that, along with fighting poverty, have suffered in the crossfire of a war against an enemy that seems beyond our control. Ideology, fuelled by blind faith, is indeed a difficult enemy to contain.

Pakistan has lost many Hafsas and Atizazs since its resolve and fight to eliminate extremism. This includes jawans in uniform and ordinary citizens. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimates 1,688 died in extremist related attacks in 2015 alone. This does not include extrajudicial or police killings. The statistics, however, fail to capture the fear that has swept into ordinary lives. The fear of what to say and not to say, the fear of where to go and when to stay at home, the fear of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is no doubt that the State has awakened to the fact that violence has gripped this country. What the State has, unfortunately, been unable to comprehend is that firstly, our society’s way of conflict-resolution is now through violence. Clan against clan, sect against sect, family member against family member; using violence to prove a point, to resolve a conflict, to take revenge. Along with poverty, it has seeped into our every day existence. Secondly, it is important to analysis the statistics that show that violent attacks have come down. What we have not fully understood is that the attacks are now more intense and brutal, far more ruthless than before. To attack a hospital, as was carried out in Quetta in August last year, is considered an obvious violation even in times of war. To attack children in school or families in the park should not be masked by the fact that the number of attacks has decreased.

The debate on how to contain violent outfits and how to curb violence has now become part of our realpolitik. Many other imperative policy issues have either emerged into this debate or been taken off the priority list. Operation Zarb-e-Arb, a military offensive to eliminate terrorists harbouring on Pakistani soil along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, is debated and discussed at all forums. The National Action Plan, a government led initiative to further sync with the military operation against terrorism that followed Zarb-e-Arb, has been analysed and reanalysed. We have seen Rangers take over the streets of Karachi after it was considered the only potential intervention to restore calm to the metropolis.

What we have learned as ordinary citizens is that normalcy for Pakistanis has taken on a new definition. Our household conversations are about small violent attacks or large fatal ones. Our newspapers are gruesomely dire and our TV channels flashing time traps, showing one bloody image after another. Safe cities, and peaceful public spaces are not part of normalcy any longer. Instead, safe communities and spaces are now something we aspire towards.

So as the New Year starts, and the complexities of this war follow us into 2017, let us pay homage to those mundane, buried concepts of normalcy and ordinary. The routine of children going to school, without fear of the worst, the community where people co-exist in harmony, the homes where violence is not considered communication, the hospitals that require no barbed wire, the parks that require no security scanning machines. Let diversity become our ordinary. Let difference become our normal.

For the sake of fearing citizens, let the ordinary back. The ordinary is good. Let us want more of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2017.

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