Stopping the vortex of violence

If we want no repeat of Peshawar attack, we have to give vigour to political movements that promote peace, justice

“Yes, life goes on and the memories fade. I guess that is why people can go on and still hope.” Shagufta Jabeen, my Bangladeshi friend, wrote to me when I told her that while we were grief-stricken, many of us also remembered December 16, 1971.

The two December 16s , 43 years apart, cannot be compared. There have been many suicide attacks in Pakistan where children have been killed, but in this instance, schoolchildren were the targets. What was horrifying was also the impunity with which the terrorists continued to kill as we heard the news with the number of dead children constantly rising. The brutality was directly proportionate to our helplessness.

Our history is full of violence, whether it was the two partitions of 1971 and 1947 or the struggle against colonialism or even before that, the different dynasties and empires as they expanded or contracted. Or, more recently, the ‘jihad’ next door, followed by 9/11 and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan, the destruction of Iraq and Syria and the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Closer to home, the hundreds of suicide and drone attacks, the multiple military operations and conflicts in Pakistan, the bombings of mosques, police stations, schools, funerals, marriage celebrations… What makes it possible for people to kill, torture and maim?

In this sea of violence, where do we go? Is Pakistan doomed by the fact of geography? Or, are we doomed by the fact of religion both in terms of Pakistan’s creation and justification, and as a site of domination by religious zealots of all ilk. Or, is Pakistan doomed due to the dominance of the security establishment and attendant militarisation? How can we ever hope to change this state of affairs? Is a deeply inclusive state possible?

History demonstrates that countries have taken decisions that have curbed if not ended their lust for war. Germany not only reunited after the end of the Cold War but all the countries that were at war in the previous century with long-term differences and cultural animosities are now part of the European Union.

Closer to home, while the Partition of India resulted in millions dead, raped, displaced, homeless, there is also plenty of evidence that shows that many people saved lives by giving shelter to the vulnerable in their homes, churches, mosques, gurdwaras and mandirs. Beyond the individual level, the Khudai Khidmatgars — a political movement in what is now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) — denounced the use of violence. Its adherents renounced the use of weapons, organised camps, set up schools, fed the poor and conducted patrols for security of their communities and settled local disputes peacefully through jirgas. They remained non-communal till the last due to which they were accused of being traitors after the Muslim League took control of the province. They prevented killings on trains and on the streets by guarding the thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who were migrating to India at the time. K-P did not witness the kind of horrors that were carried out in the two Punjabs because of the presence of a strong political movement for peace and non-violence.

To say that this was an aberration in Pashtun history is to deny agency to the Pashtuns who are stereotyped as bloodthirsty barbarians. It is these stereotypes that help justify the violence of the Taliban, which is ethnicised in popular imagination. The reality is that those who profess peace politically are systematically wiped out. For example, members of amn jirgas in Swat and other parts of K-P have been targeted and killed for their anti-Taliban views in recent years. There is little acknowledgement that these Pashtuns are fighting for peace.

The context today is different from that of the Khudai Khidmatgars in that today there is no consensus on who is the enemy nor is the world what it was like then. If we want no repeats of the kind of violence witnessed more than a week ago, we have to come out and give vigour to political movements that promote peace and justice. It also means that we open up to democratic movements and shore up those that already exist in fragmented ways and in different parts of Pakistan. It means we stop having different governance arrangements and different yardsticks for different parts of Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th,  2014.

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