Death by bombing

Monday, March 30, 2009
THE NEWS EDITORIAL
Once again the image of us, our faith and our country that goes around the world is one of violence and intolerance. Between 48 and over 70 people were killed on Friday as they prayed at a mosque – and more than 170 injured according to most reports. The explosion was probably caused by a suicide bomber and he struck just as the Imam began to recite the opening prayer. The mosque was a popular stopping point for people travelling between Afghanistan and Pakistan and was always crowded on a Friday – the softest of soft targets. Tariq Hayat Khan the administrator of Khyber Agency opined that the blast was the work of the supposedly-defunct Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Who knows? There are very rarely arrests subsequent to the bombing of a mosque or imambargah and it is almost as if the agencies of law enforcement have given up even trying to prevent them, never mind catching those responsible for the planning and logistics of such an attack. This is unlikely to be something which can have the label ‘hidden hand’ attached to it. This butchery is entirely home-grown and springs from either the internal denominational conflicts or a local dispute, a struggle for power, by one group or another in the area where the blast happened.
Almost inevitably, given the culture of eye-for-an-eye that prevails here somebody will already be plotting a reprisal. It may not come tomorrow or next week or next year, but come it will. The cycle will continue and breaking the circle becomes ever more difficult as the numbers of dead rise and with them the numbers of fathers and brothers and cousins seeking revenge for the death of their relative. The world watches this. We live in a time of globalized instant communication to the most remote places on the surface of the earth. The world watches and judges, it sees things in black-and-white and is mostly unaware of the inflections and nuances that lie behind even this most barbarous of acts. We should not be surprised when our northwest borderlands are talked of by President Obama as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’ – because on the evidence of this blast and many other incidents, it is. We have only ourselves to blame if others see us a nation of barbarians and should not be surprised if, as a consequence, they sometimes treat us accordingly.