PESHAWAR BOMBING.... Blitzed

THE NEWS
Once again Peshawar has been wracked by a terrorist bomb, this time detonated in the crowded Meena bazaar, a maze of narrow streets and alleys and multi-storey buildings. The explosion gutted dozens of houses and shops, started a large fire and led to the later collapse of several buildings. Rescue services found it difficult to access the site because of the level of destruction and the congestion caused by debris and the narrowness of the approaches. The blast was in all likelihood a car bomb containing up to 150kgs of explosives though there is no definitive report as to whether it was a suicide or a remote-controlled explosion. At the time of writing there are around 89 dead, most of them reportedly women and children, as well as 150 injured and medical services in Peshawar are buckling under the sheer volume of casualties. Live reporting from the scene of the massacre captured the sense of chaos and confusion that always accompanies the immediate aftermath of such events, as well the later determined – and brave – attempts by fire and rescue services to bring the situation under control. The live visuals were eerily reminiscent of pictures of the bombed cities of Dresden and London in World War Two, and evoked that dreadful word that has come to embody lightning-fast and devastating attacks on civilian populations – blitz. As the Meena bazaar was bombed there were reports of another incident, this time in Kabul, which had come to an end. In an early morning raid on the UN hostel in the city six UN workers were killed, their three attackers shot by security forces and two other unidentified persons died. There is no obvious causal linkage between the two events, carried out by separate groups hundreds of miles apart in two different countries. No causal linkage perhaps, but a linkage in terms of the perpetrators of both being willing to sacrifice the lives of women and children as well as humanitarians, and a linkage in that both countries are cursed by a malaise that has grown over three decades or more.

Extremism, whatever the historical reasons that are bent around trying to understand it and place it in our national and cultural context, now envelops all of us in a deadly and debilitating cloud. There will be the usual cries that 'those who did this are not Muslims'…but of course they were. This was not some plot hatched and executed by mad Hindus or Sikhs, this is a plot that will have been hatched within a few miles of where the blast occurred, by men who believe that their piety and vision of a Muslim future world, wherein their own paradigm will rule supreme, is best achieved by shredding the bodies of their fellow Muslims. There are groups of extremists in every province, not all coordinated by any means nor sharing the same agenda, which are steadily eroding the national morale. The government is standing fast and firm in Waziristan, but the blowback is there for us all to see every day. The forces of law and order, especially the police, are nowadays stretched beyond reasonable limits, and we should refrain from laying the blame at their door seconds after every blast or atrocity. Simply, the police are a finite resource – in every country – and those that we have here in Pakistan are poorly paid, badly equipped and often indifferently led. (We will leave aside issues relating to corruption for today.) Given that the police forces of every town and city across the land are just beginning to get to grips with the demands of securing the nations schools, their scant resources cannot be spread much thinner to provide security to every bazaar and shopping mall nationwide. There will be other blasts in the future, as there have been today and in the past. Some terrorists we will intercept, but it only needs one to get through. The blitz they inflict on us may be awful but we must show our resolve, our unwillingness to be cowed, and say 'No, you shall not pass, neither shall we give you relief….now get you hence, Beast, because this is our land, not yours.'