Good and evil

One can only imagine what it is that we need to see to realise that militants pose single biggest threat to Pakistan.

We have seen far too much evil in our country over the last few years. It comes in the form of bombings, suicide attacks and targeted shootings of persons on the basis of their sect, ethnicity or political affiliation. Most recently there has been a sudden upsurge in violence in the Khyber Agency where over 50 people have died in a bombing at a mosque and in clashes between militants and soldiers. The Khyber Agency has remained troubled for a very, very long time. It seems there is no end to the violence we see in the north of our country. All the claims made of success in defeating the militants in real terms appears to mean very little. It is clear from the latest reports coming out of Khyber Agency that they are capable of striking at soldiers or hitting targets with impunity. For the people living there, of course, this means a life caught up in constant conflict.

But amidst all that is bad, we also occasionally see some good. We saw it in Kohistan, after the recent sectarian attack on a bus there, when Shia elders from a village protected the Sunni labourers present there from what appeared to be a retaliatory attack by those angered by the killings of the passengers by armed men. People, then, in many places retain their sanity and their conscience. The basic sense of what is right has not vanished. This is something we must take advantage of. Fata and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are being used for strategic purposes by many groups of militants. The question of where they gain their support from is yet to be answered. The grisly events of the past couple of days should be proof enough — if proof were even needed — that the Taliban and the militants are a cancer spreading through our society and needs to be seen as such. While there is much consternation — as there should be — when drone attacks kill innocent Pakistanis or when Nato jets attack and kill our soldiers, it is saddening that one doesn’t see the same kind of outrage when militants take the lives of our security forces personnel or of ordinary Pakistanis. One can only imagine what it is that we need to see to realise that the militants pose the single biggest threat to Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2012.