Pakistan - Blood that should not go waste

Terrorism has been around us for many years now, but what sets apart the terrorist attack on the Peshawar Army Public School on Tuesday as the ultimate in savagery is the sheer scale of its horror. Nine gunmen, disguised as paramilitary soldiers, entered the school and shot dead 131 school children and 10 others including the school principal and injured almost the same in number in a brazen daylight attack. Not that the big tally of fatalities was the terrorists' only concern they conveyed in no uncertain terms also that they are brutal and cruel like none ever before. They hounded and hunted down the children, chased them from classrooms to classrooms, shot them in foreheads and at legs of those hiding under the benches - and even burnt alive a lady teacher tied to the chair for the innocents to witness the grisly spectacle. "I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn't scream ... the man with big boots kept looking for students and pushing bullets into their bodies," says a pupil who was shot in both legs. Not somewhere in the distant mountainous North Waziristan was this devilish theatre staged; it was in the heart of Peshawar, adjacent to the Army Housing Colony and at the time the provincial capital was on red alert apprehending a severe backlash of the ongoing military operation in tribal areas. Is it that the intelligence failed, or was it a security lapse? Let there be a thorough investigation and responsibility fixed. And there is no confusion also as to who was behind this attack - within hours of the attack the Tehreek-e-Taliban spokesman, Muhammad Khurasani, was on phone claiming its responsibility. "We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females. We want them to feel the pain". Yes, the people of Pakistan have been immensely anguished over the massacre, but they are definitely not frightened into submission. In fact, the contrary has happened - whatever little sympathy the TTP enjoyed among the people the outfit it has squandered away by attacking innocent schoolchildren. 

Nothing good comes out of evil; barring the reality that in this case the anguish and anger the massacre of the innocents caused to the polity has helped clinch the long-eluded national consensus for a fight-to-finish action against terrorist outfits. For the first time there is the political convergence on the imperative of a decisive operation against this curse, which was not there given the political elite's total engagement with its do or die power play. Hopefully that is behind us, though it hardly matters now as their reservations have been overtaken by the events on ground. Equally discouraging has been the application of law against terrorists, both under-trial and convicted. That too is behind now that the government has decided that the convicted terrorists now on death row should go to the gallows. Yet, something more is still wanting in the fight against terrorism, and that is the menace of religious extremism which tends to throw up 'fidayeen' in the form of suicide-bombers. The religious leaders owe it to the people of Pakistan that they should sit together and sign up a code of conduct aimed at taking out the poison of extremism from their preaching. 

By launching a military operation in North Waziristan the government of Pakistan had met the long-standing demand of Afghanistan and US-led coalition. Not that it had its 'good Taliban' but because then it would have appeared to have acted under foreign pressure. But as the operation progressed, it became quite clear to the international community that the Operation Zarb-e-Azb was going apace against all terrorists irrespective of their past record or future role. And it was Pakistan's expectation that Afghanistan would be taking a matching stand against Mulla Fazlullah and other Swati Taliban who have taken refuge in Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan and keep carrying out murderous forays into Pakistan. As the attack on the Peshawar school lasted it became abundantly evident that the same group was involved, prompting Army Chief General Raheel Sharif to call on the Afghan government to apprise it accordingly. Kabul has to respond positively and in a meaningful manner. The Peshawar tragedy has brought the entire saga of Taliban-conducted terrorism to a head; there is just no turning back from there. Given the new rulers in Kabul are amenable to reason, unlike in the past when an ego-driven Hamid Karzai's dispensation nurtured a strong anti-Pakistan bias, there is hope that the menace of terrorism can be taken care of once and for all.