No, I am not going to waste my breath on the usual disbelief, condemnation and sorrow. No disrespect to the poor young souls who lost their lives in the recent Quetta police academy attack, I was equally outraged and saw the usual and expected reaction on my Twitter timeline. Very typical, very much expected and very ordinary stuff: martyrs, heaven, prayers, courage etc. What honestly infuriated me were the condemnations from the respected prime minister (PM) and the president. The elected PM’s hollow condemnation if translated in simple and plain language is: “I dislike this act.” Hello, Mr Premier, who would not? But the next time before you have one of your aides do a formal two-liner, perhaps think for a moment or two and put yourself in the shoes of the pain stricken parent who may have not have just lost their only son, but perhaps their only source of income.
We are told that the respected president is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and pat came another condemnation from the Supreme Commander. We were also told that the backbone of terrorism was broken. Well, with a seemingly broken back, these people were able to strike rather viciously.
The timeline was also full of the usual blame game that neighbours were behind this, and of course, the name of the lone catch of the century, Kulbhushan Yadav, was repeated on a rosary. The angry Mr Khan who is hell bent on proving that Mr Modi and our premier are bosom buddies fired a few usual shots from the hip.
The honourable defence minister could not resist and responded in the tone of a petty party worker by insinuating that Mr Khan was the one toeing the mission of our archrival, Mr Modi. Not to overlook the usual allegation of our ‘revolutionaries’ who blame the incumbents of signalling their ‘friend’ from across the border to ‘do something’ whenever the revolutionaries tend to launch their agitation.
The ironic part is that a sizeable number of people believe and buy this irrational and juvenile gibberish. At a display of such utter stupidity by the two major political players, one has to just withhold some really inappropriate words underneath one’s tongue.
The rest of the usual nonsense was rampant, regarding how this was in response to the Uri attack. The verdict was out: this is just another nefarious move to create a blip in the path of the ‘game changer, commonly known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
In the meantime, multiple terror outfits claimed the responsibility, as if this was some cup or a trophy. Not so surprising were the names of lashkar this and lashkar that, Deash, TTP, the usual suspects. The million dollar discovery was that these terrorists were from Afghanistan, and hence, of course, non-state actors. As usual, the non-state actors challenged the ‘state actors’, so to speak.
Listening to many commentators who hit the usual piñata of a security lapse and incompetency of governments — local and federal — one could deduce that they were trying to justify their respective time slots. The local government decided to form a committee to investigate the matter, and only God knows what it would possibly investigate without going to the country where these people came from. Even if they dare to go in that direction, what can they possibly accomplish?
Of course, the usual promises for future were made. Perhaps a very few people pay attention to these promises of future, but they instinctively expect them from the government. Like preprogrammed robots the government promises and the people accept. We are what I consider the prisoners of future. The promises are way too many, and the confines of limited hope very restrictive.
The bright minds who hog the screen time and gnaw at the nerves of poor viewers with their nonstop chatter rarely stop for a minute to ponder and dare to ask the powers to be a very simple yet very potent question: why on earth do we have militant organisations on our soil in the presence of a world class military? As a concerned citizen, I don’t want to hear the long-winded story of what happened in the past, who created what, and what the utility was at that time. Talk to me in present tense and respond to me about today.
If proscribed and banned outfits merely alter their names and carry on their business as usual, then the chances of the reversal of this tide are beyond bleak. The so-called charitable organisations that operate under that facade must go, and they cannot be allowed to re-emerge re-branded. Similarly, the powers to be ought to focus on a single yet very critical point. If the neighbours around us are supposedly ganging against us, then is it that we can do to possibly reverse this effort. An astute leader — if there is one left in our land — must use some superb diplomatic skills to alleviate the external concerns, demonstrating some much-needed statesmanship.
The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at [email protected]. He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar