When it comes to God, say the mystics, the only appropriate response is silence. When it comes to the Peshawar tragedy, the only possible response is silence. What is there to say? That it was evil incarnate? Is that not stating the obvious? What is there to do? Bring the children back to life? Is that not beyond our capabilities? What are we but useless in the aftermath of this attack? But it is not acceptable to be useless. It is not acceptable to say this is a situation we cannot deal with. So we have moved into the macho, chest-thumping mode. No more moratorium on the death penalty for terrorists, all-out war against terrorists, no more good and bad Taliban. We will bring the war to them. Except is this not a reaction we have seen played out elsewhere? Did Bush not react in the same way after 9/11 and did he not bring the war to Afghanistan? And Iraq? And Syria? And the whole of the Middle East? Why would we succeed in containing ‘terror’ where even the US could not?
So what do we do? Do we allow the terrorists to murder at will? Or do we attack indiscriminately, killing innocents, making new martyrs with a different version of the truth, a version in which we are the evildoers? I do not know. This problem is too big for me to solve. I have a fixed principle: killing is wrong except in self-defence. And killing an innocent — any innocent — is wrong even in self-defence. I do not have either the information nor — thank God! — the responsibility to react strategically to this event. But I do wonder: who were these terrorists who believed it was alright to kill a child? Who were these people who could look a child straight in the eye and still shoot him?
The Daily Mail has released pictures, purportedly, of these terrorists. I have looked at them, at the familiar features, the familiar beards, the familiar dress. I see young men who look like them walking the streets of Islamabad every day. Young men? Two of these ‘men’ are boys, one is not more than 14, maybe 16. The other might be 18. The perspective changes: a boy kills a boy. He does not think of his age-mate as a child. He, after all, is a child who thinks he is a man. So I wonder: what is it that led to a child thinking himself justified in killing another child? What did we, as a society, fail to provide our children that allowed them to turn to murder? And if we kill all the existing adults who have turned into murderers, will it inoculate us, somehow, from all the children who already are or will grow up to become murderers?
Belief systems contribute to murder. Did you know that, in Pakistan, when it comes to honour killing, young boys are made to kill their sisters because, after all, if an adult does it, he will spend years in prison, as opposed to a child’s months? A 14-year-old boy who kills his sister, what happens to him? What sort of adult will he turn into? Did you know that, in Pakistan, young boys kill over football matches, sparking feuds that may continue for centuries? What is the value of life then? Did you know that, in Pakistan, mosques can give the call to kill and a mob will burn to death a young couple expecting its first child? What, then, is the value of one life, two lives, three?
So, where exactly does the ability to terrorise come from? Does it come from organisations that rope in young boys to serve their political purposes, education systems that instil in them the belief that their Allah requires them to kill, or parents who teach them that their honour as well as their religion requires them to kill? What, exactly, is our narrative here? Where, exactly, is the evil we are setting out to remove from our society? And how do we intend to remove it? Can we kill a couple of terrorists and confidently expect to be safe from terrorism or does this require more work? Do we need a counter-narrative to the belief systems that justify murder? And how do we create these? Is it enough to teach a gentler version of Islam or do we need to set up a system that puts the individual centre-stage, a system that provides every single individual resident in this country access to high quality education, healthcare, justice systems and good economic opportunities? A system every single individual is invested in, so that his/her life experiences themselves either provide the counter-narrative to belief systems promoting murder or support the counter-narrative to murder that we should, by now, have the sense to create.
Once upon a time, for the lofty purpose of empire building, we created a narrative that said it was our duty to kill infidels. Then we expanded our definition of infidels to all Muslims who disagreed with us. Suddenly, there were Muslims killing Muslims all over Pakistan. Today, we are facing the death of 132 school children by a political party that used to claim it fought for Islam. Today, its excuse for killing is simply revenge: because the Pakistan army killed our children, we are killing theirs.
Maybe, just maybe, when a society makes killing acceptable, this is the inevitable result. Killing becomes the answer to everything. Maybe, just maybe, we need to step back and look at what we have created and how and why, and then address those factors, instead of advocating further killing. Or maybe we need to do both: take the war to existing terrorists while making a concerted effort to eradicate the factors that created them.
I do not know. And I do not envy the people who are expected to know. I certainly do not envy the decision makers responsible for taking the next step. I can only speak for myself. I do not believe further violence is the appropriate response. The myth of killing as the answer to social issues already grips us too tightly. It is time we loosened its bonds. If and how we can do this is an entirely different discussion. But if we cannot, if we remain enthralled by our violent dreams of redemption through revenge, I fear we will continue our long fall into a spiralling culture of violence. I fear we will continue to witness the death of our children. I fear that the only possible response to the death of our children will, forever, be silence.
The writer is a freelance columnist