Pakistan: No Man’s Country

Balcoh Hal

By Vardha Khalil

When Washington DC is sleeping, half of the world is awake and when morning appears here many countries, including Pakistan, are concluding their day. So when you wake up in the morning and check your phone and social media then you get updated about what was happening around the globe while you were asleep. When I got up in the morning, I got the horrible news on both regular and social media. The more I studied, the more pain I felt. The biggest optimism for any person is the belief that the future will be better than the present. And as a Pakistani, every time I think that now the country’s situation cannot get worse and may be now it will recuperate but one after one every blatant act of terrorism is making this a shallow and rusty hope. As the Pakistani government was weighing its options to tackle the Taliban and their affiliates, indulged in a debate of good and bad Taliban, at the same time those outfits were planning the suicide attacks at a church in Peshawar. More than 80 innocent Pakistani citizens perished in these atrocious attacks. The sense of loss over this grizzly massacre is quite natural yet some political circles cling to the idea of opening dialogue with the Taliban. The agenda of these political circles is no different from those Taliban who want to convert Pakistan into a sect-minority-free “Islamic State”. Extremist Taliban factors and their sympathizers in political parties, in a bid to enforce self-style version of Islam over Pakistan, are transforming it into a land where inhabitation of humans will be impossible. In current situation the terrified minorities and secular groups are already forced to leave their houses. After target killings of Hazara people in Balochistan, thousands of citizens are seeking shelter in other parts of the country. Several people are moving to other countries because of Shia genocide in the country. The Ahmadiyya community, which has already taken the brunt of sectarian hatred, is once again on the hit-list. Hunting of Ahmadiyya community had started right after the very creation of Pakistan. Yet, in 1973, their persecution was legalized by declaring them non-Muslims in the constitution. The “Islamisation” that started during Zia-ul-Haq’s era in 1980s not only failed miserably but such efforts also gave birth to such monsters who have changed the whole country into a haunted place. The requirement of the new era is to avoid transforming Pakistan into some ideology or religion and just make it a secular country which is suitable for a common human being to live in. We should strive to make our country a place where all human beings have basic rights and there is no human rights violation in the name of religion.