The following day

Finally, predictably, trouble they fomented abroad came home in ‘the worst terrorist backlash in the entire region’.

Just as many a commentator had remarked recently and felicitously that the expected revenge of the Taliban had not transpired — quite forgetting the Wagah incident that also indirectly targeted children and women, as it is mainly families who go there to be entertained by the somewhat ridiculous daily spectacle devoid of dignity — something rather worse than hell was let loose upon us.

Hell indeed for the families of the then 141 (there may have since been other fatalities amongst the couple of hundred reportedly injured) left mourning their loss caused by a stupendously brutal and senseless act of pure murder. Is it only the media which tells us that our dear leadership merely ‘condemns’ whatever may have happened, or do these people actually use that heartless meaningless word? If they do, it is an insult, and if they do not, it is insulting to them.

One other standard comment was trotted out by the pious unthinking — that the Pakistani Taliban murderers could not have been Muslims. Well, that is what they proclaim themselves to be and it is in the name of their perverted and peculiar brand of religion in which they have always done what they have done and got away with it all — until this year in this country they finally brought the wrath of the Pakistan Army down upon themselves.

Admittedly this time round — and never in the past has it been at this level of barbarity — the TTP claimed revenge, “the army targets our families. We want them to feel our pain.” Declan Walsh, writing in The New York Times the day after commented: “Even other militant groups felt obliged to comment, though perhaps, cynically. A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, who have pushed civilian casualties in Afghanistan to a new high in the past year, posted a Twitter message criticising the attack as un-Islamic and expressing shared pain with the victims’ families.” Yup, un-Islamic indeed, but then is what they themselves do Islamic? Have previous TTP acts been Islamic?

Continued Walsh: “a senior security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, insisted that they had shown no intention of taking hostages. ‘They were there to kill, and this is what they did,’ he said.”

And more: “It offered some relief to citizens that the Pakistani Taliban had, for the most part, failed to deliver the revenge they had threatened when the military offensive began in June. Now, after Tuesday’s school massacre, even that hope has disappeared…

“Vali Nasr, Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former Obama Administration official said, ‘They want to tell the public that the Taliban can hit them, and hit them hard, and that the military can’t do anything about it’.”

Then we have “The Guardian view”, an editorial with the sub-heading “A massacre of the innocents which shows Islamist extremism at its most callous. But Pakistan’s own policies are also to blame.” Indeed, yes, they are. This is all part of the blowback of the mid-1990s and Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister who claimed the Taliban to be “our children”. How right is The Guardian: “So Pakistan finally embarked on the serious war against extremism which it had largely avoided in the past. The resulting campaign is the latest act in the tragic drama of Pakistani politics…

“The armed forces and successive governments have played with fire for many years … This double game has caused untold difficulties and suffering in neighbouring countries. Finally and predictably, the trouble they fomented abroad came home in what one respected analyst has called ‘the worst terrorist backlash in the entire region’. The Peshawar massacre is proof enough of that.” Amen.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th,  2014.

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