Dead of winter

The rot takes your breath away.

There’s something in the icy winds of winter that carries the stench of rot to all four corners of this fair land. It is a stench borne of institutional decay and of the decomposing carcass of statecraft littering the august corridors of power.



In the dead of winter, the dead ofwinter ask us why they had to die without a cause. Two winters years ago, the sweet children of the Army Public School (APS) did not ‘sacrifice’ themselves for us — they were butchered by savages because we made the savages what they became and let them butcher our kids. Sacrifice is voluntary and intentional, being massacred is not. It was the rot within us that led to the slaughter of these innocents; the rot in our thinking and scheming; the rot in our priorities and our visionless thought process; the rot within our institutional dynamics and the midget-like stature of those who have led them for decades; it was the rot within our state structure and the rancid style of governance that is unable to reform itself and its processes.

And yet even today the rot takes your breath away. It is here, there and everywhere — inside the pages of the Justice Faez Isa report, under the debris of the ill-fated PIA aircraft that consumed so many precious lives, and behind all those closed doors where the National Action Plan takes a nap.

But it is the rotting of the mind that spells the greatest existential danger for us. It is this rotting that refuses to acknowledge the institutional rot; that ignores the irony of holding somber candle-light vigils to remember the dead instead avenging them; that conveniently brushes aside the need to reform our blatant deformities while pretending that words alone will ensure no more kids are massacred.



In the dead of winter, the dead ofwinter ask why they had to die without a cause. The crash of the PIA aircraft was not an accident — it was the unpardonable failure of someone somewhere within PIA and the Civil Aviation Authority to do what he or she is paid to do. It is the rot within these organisations — and those who run them — that forced them to ground the ATR aircraft after — and not before — the loss of lives. The rot symbolises more than individual incompetence — it is symptomatic of an organisational culture of rich unprofessionalism. It is also a reminder, if a reminder is needed, that parking cronies way past their sell-by date in key institutions can have devastating consequences.



It is this rot within the organisation — and those who run it — that enables the Civil Aviation Authority to carry on using the fraud explosive detectors at all airport entry points. These toys with antennae have been declared junk by courts in many Western countries, and the inventor of this junk is in jail for fraud, but the CAA insists on using them. If God forbid something untoward happens despite this junk someone somewhere within the bowels of this organization will have blood on his hands.

Terror strikes and we do not learn. Flights crash and we do not learn. The rot continues to spread like cancer across the pock-marked body of this fair nation. How many more death anniversaries do we need to observe in December before it is too much?



For would it not be correct to say that too much has already been lost and yet state inertia refuses to break its hold over us? Under the trappings of a functional state, there is a dysfunctional apparatus rupturing at the seams. The rot seeps deeper than one man’s incompetence or one institution’s paralytic sloth. It permeates deeper every time one person is hired without merit, or when a project is allocated without due process, or when an officer is promoted without a professional reason. The rot penetrates and proliferates insides the State machinery every time accountability is sacrificed at the altar of expediency; every time responsibility is replaced by official immunity; every time that loyalty is elevated above worthiness and talent.

Then men and women rot. Then organisations and institutions rot. Then people die. Then more die as rot begets rot. In the dead of winter, the dead of winter pile up.

The rot makes us not recognise the extent of the rot. It disallows seemingly rational men and women to acknowledge the absurdity of the situation that leads to the avoidable deaths of fellow citizens. It also forbids us to accept that abnormalities can never ever become normal with time. What else would explain the inaction of the State against fundamental violations of law by wielders of power? What else would explain the refusal to undertake achingly obvious reform within every sphere of the governance structure? And what else would in fact explain the shocking absence of outrage at the dismal state of life for a vast majority of the citizens of this Islamic republic? What else but the deep rot of the mind.

Echoing in the hills above Havelian and within the halls of APS Peshawar are gentle whispers of painfully fond memories lovingly caressed by unfulfilled dreams. The physical remnants of the tragedies will disappear — wreckage removed and walls painted over — but lessons will stick around for a while longer. For in the dead of winter there is a warning for those who may care to pay heed: Reform now or rot forever.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2016.

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