Who killed the children of Hangu - there is no claimant yet, and may never be - given inability of even the most stone-hearted to admit committing such a heinous crime. How would these kids, five boys and a girl, some of them as young as two, know that the cleverly-planted grenade was a killing machine and not a toy they felt happy to find in the street? How would they know that beyond the end of the street they lived there was a war? According to a local, "One of the minors found the device and started playing with it when it suddenly went off".
There is so much common in ignorance and innocence. The death was in their chase; their parents had migrated to Hangu from the neighbouring Orakzai tribal agency where military is fighting the Taliban. But even when there is no taker of this battle-front victory, there is this puzzling commonality between the Hangu tragedy and the attack in the vicinity of the General Headquarters (GHQ), Rawalpindi - almost simultaneous to these incidents the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan offered peace talks to the government. The banned outfit's spokesman said 'they once again offer serious and meaningful dialogue to the government'. And should Pakistan government rise to the bait the spokesman promised 'positive response', as it did when Maulana Samiul Haq approached them. Is it that these two attacks were expected to gain position of strength at the negotiating table? Or, is it that having committed the murder of the innocent children the TTP is trying to avert the tit-for-tat nemesis like the one they had after the Rawalpindi attack? There can be no intelligent guess about the TTP's game plan - essentially because both the government and its political opposition tend to figure it out in the light of their myopic outlooks.
Intentionally or otherwise the government is confused, as if scared of disturbing the status quo. The opposition, on the other hand, is too vocal but sharply divided, largely along their narrow political agendas. As expected the PTI's Imran Khan has welcomed the TTP's latest peace talks offer, warning that war with Taliban would 'destroy' the Pakistan army - as if so far the terrorists have been sparing any effort not to do so. With nothing to his credit as peace-maker between the government and banned TTP Imran Khan must come up every time with some quotable quote to remain relevant.
His immediate rival Maulana Fazlur Rehman's case is not very different; he too is on the same page with Imran Khan vis-a-vis the Taliban. That despite their identical dispositions towards the TTP they are at each other's throat the reason is their tense rivalry over the power in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. At present there is greater bite to the Maulana's position on the Taliban offer also for the reason that the Nawaz Sharif government is not prepared to give the JUI(F) a plum ministry in the federal government. Whether the positive response the two have shown to the Taliban peace offer has any taker beyond their parties in the KP or elsewhere in Pakistan, not much is detectable. Dissatisfied both with the PML (N)-headed federal government and PTI-headed provincial government the ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan wants to know what is actually happening on the counter-terrorism front. Obviously, with perceptions and perspectives of the three principal stakeholders in the front-line province so much at variance the decision to accept the Taliban's offer of peace dialogue lies somewhere else. And that may be the case now, aptly reflected by the speculation rife in the Capital that a full-fledged military operation in North Waziristan is in the offing. The people's patience with atrocities committed by the terrorists and instantly owned up by the TTP is fast running out. They ask how killing six small children is Jihad, and what is that the so-called Jihadists are prepared to give up on the negotiating table. If the TTP has any agenda for peace talks Amir Muqam of Shangla, who recently escaped a deadly assassination attempt, has asked the pro-TTP parties to 'unearth' and show it to the people of Pakistan. If not, then its offer of peace dialogue makes no sense.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Who killed the children of Hangu - Offer inked in children blood
Who killed the children of Hangu - there is no claimant yet, and may never be - given inability of even the most stone-hearted to admit committing such a heinous crime. How would these kids, five boys and a girl, some of them as young as two, know that the cleverly-planted grenade was a killing machine and not a toy they felt happy to find in the street? How would they know that beyond the end of the street they lived there was a war? According to a local, "One of the minors found the device and started playing with it when it suddenly went off".
There is so much common in ignorance and innocence. The death was in their chase; their parents had migrated to Hangu from the neighbouring Orakzai tribal agency where military is fighting the Taliban. But even when there is no taker of this battle-front victory, there is this puzzling commonality between the Hangu tragedy and the attack in the vicinity of the General Headquarters (GHQ), Rawalpindi - almost simultaneous to these incidents the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan offered peace talks to the government. The banned outfit's spokesman said 'they once again offer serious and meaningful dialogue to the government'. And should Pakistan government rise to the bait the spokesman promised 'positive response', as it did when Maulana Samiul Haq approached them. Is it that these two attacks were expected to gain position of strength at the negotiating table? Or, is it that having committed the murder of the innocent children the TTP is trying to avert the tit-for-tat nemesis like the one they had after the Rawalpindi attack? There can be no intelligent guess about the TTP's game plan - essentially because both the government and its political opposition tend to figure it out in the light of their myopic outlooks.
Intentionally or otherwise the government is confused, as if scared of disturbing the status quo. The opposition, on the other hand, is too vocal but sharply divided, largely along their narrow political agendas. As expected the PTI's Imran Khan has welcomed the TTP's latest peace talks offer, warning that war with Taliban would 'destroy' the Pakistan army - as if so far the terrorists have been sparing any effort not to do so. With nothing to his credit as peace-maker between the government and banned TTP Imran Khan must come up every time with some quotable quote to remain relevant.
His immediate rival Maulana Fazlur Rehman's case is not very different; he too is on the same page with Imran Khan vis-a-vis the Taliban. That despite their identical dispositions towards the TTP they are at each other's throat the reason is their tense rivalry over the power in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. At present there is greater bite to the Maulana's position on the Taliban offer also for the reason that the Nawaz Sharif government is not prepared to give the JUI(F) a plum ministry in the federal government. Whether the positive response the two have shown to the Taliban peace offer has any taker beyond their parties in the KP or elsewhere in Pakistan, not much is detectable. Dissatisfied both with the PML (N)-headed federal government and PTI-headed provincial government the ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan wants to know what is actually happening on the counter-terrorism front. Obviously, with perceptions and perspectives of the three principal stakeholders in the front-line province so much at variance the decision to accept the Taliban's offer of peace dialogue lies somewhere else. And that may be the case now, aptly reflected by the speculation rife in the Capital that a full-fledged military operation in North Waziristan is in the offing. The people's patience with atrocities committed by the terrorists and instantly owned up by the TTP is fast running out. They ask how killing six small children is Jihad, and what is that the so-called Jihadists are prepared to give up on the negotiating table. If the TTP has any agenda for peace talks Amir Muqam of Shangla, who recently escaped a deadly assassination attempt, has asked the pro-TTP parties to 'unearth' and show it to the people of Pakistan. If not, then its offer of peace dialogue makes no sense.
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