Madness unending

We are slowly but surely becoming accustomed to madness. The sound of bomb blasts that rip through cities and decimate life is a familiar one. People in all major cities recognise it, and this is particularly true in Khyber-Paktunkhwa, which has borne the brunt of terrorist violence over the last many years. Any thoughts that violence could be receding have been shattered over the past few days.

The latest blast took place on March 4, at a mosque close to a shrine in the Akbarpura area, as people were eating food served at the place of worship following Friday prayers. The explosion was the third to take place in four days in the province. A timed device is reported to have been used, killing 11 people and injuring 43. The deaths are tragic and the sense of peace in people’s lives has been badly shattered; there is a constant feeling that they can be struck down anywhere and at any time and there is a very real threat to a way of life that has continued for centuries.

It is impossible to read into the motives of the men who planted the bomb and then detonated it at a time when maximum damage could be inflicted. But it seems plausible that their intention was to target the shrine as a place of Sufi worship that represents an entirely different kind of life to the one the militants favour — a life that promotes tolerance and the value of all human life. We have seen this menace growing rapidly over the past few years. The new wave of bombings in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa represents an acceleration in the violence. Lives are unsafe than ever before, a new sense of danger lurks everywhere and talk of the extremists being on the run, as claimed by those in government, is hard to digest. No aspect of life is safe, everything is in flux and this sense of insecurity is having a growing impact on the lives of people everywhere. The question they all ask with one voice is when they can gain relief and if life will ever return to what is was in the times before militants took a hold on everything we know as good in our country.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2011.