Come and see the blood in the streets

A poignant forward on the Peshawar bloodbath in which 16 terrorist of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) butchered 132 children, most of them shot point blank in the head, was this Urdu couplet from a Pakistani friend: “ Phool dekhte thhey janazon pe hamesha Shaukat/Kal meri aankhon ne phoolon ke janazey dekhey .” (I had always seen flowers on coffins, but yesterday my eyes saw flowers’ coffins.)

This dastardly attack in which Taliban gunmen scaled the wall of the Army Public School and killed over 150 people (the latest count is 162), setting one teacher fire in front of her students, has left the entire world dazed. Why children? How can anybody kill children so mercilessly?

A TTP spokesman said this was retaliation for the army’s operations launched in June against its hideouts in North Waziristan. As parents and families mourn their young and ask their Allah what sins their children had committed, the TTP has warned of more such attacks, this time targeting the children of politicians. Terrorist groups such as the ISIS and the TTP are taking the meaning and connotations of “terror” to new and unscaled levels of violence and brutality.

When there is mourning in so many homes, where does one even begin the narrative of this horrendous crime? Imagine the pain of 15-year-old Baqir Jafri, who lost his mother — Farhat Jafri — a teacher in the school, who was resting in the staff room nursing a fever. Hearing the sound of gunfire emanating from the auditorium where Baqir was attending a demonstration, ironically, on rendering first aid, she ran towards the auditorium.

Meanwhile, intense shooting was going on inside. Baqir ducked under a desk but a terrorist saw him and shot at him. Luckily the bullet just grazed his skin without entering the skull. As he lay still pretending to be dead, he saw his teacher, Ms Hafsa, being shot three times in the head.

After the shooting was over, elsewhere in the school, his elder brother Sitwat began searching for his mother and brother. He “rang her number 100 times but there was no response”, he later told reporters. He called his father who said Baqir was hurt but safe, but there was no sign of their mother. One of the boys told him he had seen their mother running to the auditorium. Finally her handbag and mobile phone were found near the stairs of the auditorium.

In the home of Ahmad Elahi, 14, a student of Class 9, his mother Sumaira told Al Jazeera how passionate he was about cars. “He couldn’t wait to start driving, and kept telling me I should get him a car. He knew how much each one cost.” All the students of Class 9, save one child who did not attend school that day, were killed in the attack.

Pakistan’s armed forces and the government have now launched an offensive against the TTP, but it is too little too late. Even as the world mourns, there is scepticism about Pakistan’s ability and intent to tackle terrorism. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words in Pakistan in 2011 are being recalled. She had said: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbour.” The context at that time was Pakistan providing a safe haven for militants to launch attacks on Afghanistan; however India has been the worst sufferer vis-à-vis Pakistan’s double-speak on militancy and Kashmir’s “freedom fighters”.

A time when 132 little coffins are being made ready is no time to gloat or say “I told you so”. Unfortunately, some Indian TV channels did just that even while wails and screams and maatam (breast beating) were echoing in Peshawar.

While it was disappointing to hear hawkish analysts hold forth on Pakistan’s terrorist-friendly policies on the heels of the carnage, , Pakistan stunned the world when one of its courts granted bail to the architect of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks — Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has officially been banned but has resurfaced in another avatar.

It is this kind of double-speak by Pakistan on terrorists and terrorism that is confounding the world and infuriating India. After the Peshawar attacks, Pakistan TV channels beamed discussions on the government’s response to the carnage which, its army maintains, was carried out by the Afghan-based Pakistan Taliban. Pakistan’s army chief Gen Raheel Sharif visited Kabul and requested the handing over to Pakistan of the Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani analysts, scoffing at this development, said that had such an attack been made on India by Pakistan-based militants, “India would have lined up its army along the Indo-Pak border and threatened a military offensive against Pakistan”.

But such arguments only bark up the wrong tree. The sooner Pakistan, its media and analysts realise and accept that militancy and terrorism, violence and bloodshed, suicide bombings and trained and armed extremists slipping across the border deserve only one label — that of terrorists — and not “freedom fighters” when it suits them, the better for its own future.

But unfortunately, the issue is not that simple. There are three strident and conflicting points of view in Pakistan. The army has its own views and axe to grind, the politicians have their own with the Sharif regime being weakened by the recent Imran Khan-led attacks on it. Add to this a section in the alienated north-western tribal belts that actually support the PTT’s ideology, against the “big bad and anti-Islam Americans”, and Pakistan’s problems get compounded manifold.

No easy solutions exist. But the challenge thrown by a mother in a BBC interview where she called the TTP “ hijron ki fauj ” (an army of eunuchs) and said Peshawar’s mothers, who were like wounded tigresses right now, are totally ready to take them on, keeps resonating. Meanwhile, the image of 132 little coffins makes any new year celebrations impossible.

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