Daily Times

After every tragedy, like the one in Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, which took the lives of more than 20 people last week, it seems that our nation leaps to target politicians in their criticism instead of consoling the victims or their families, as if only parliamentarians and no one else hold responsibility for such attacks. Facebook updates emerge instantly calling them insensitive, ignorant, uncouth, corrupt and selfish. Their clothes are made fun of, their watches ridiculed, their eating habits mocked and, on top of that, their physical location grabs everyone’s attention. “Only if Mian Nawaz Sharif had spent more time in Pakistan,” they comment. “Why does he have to make so many foreign trips?”

To some extent, I understand why this happens. From early childhood, we are taught to hate politicians. Indeed, it is our favourite national pastime. You can, for as long as you want, talk about their extravagant lifestyles to show off your religiosity and discuss the billions of dollars that they have swindled out of Pakistan to their Swiss bank accounts to prove you patriotism. No one will ever object.

Remember the documentary that showed the food that was served to the horses of Asif Ali Zardari? Exactly. An international news agency ran that story back in the 1990s. Watching that movie, we used to think how lucky those horses were when compared to the poor human being in Pakistan. And now when I look at the Raiwind palaces of the Sharif brothers, their upholstered sofas, the silk rugs, the marble floors and the stuffed lions, I wonder how a person can earn that much money through honest means.

No, do not get me wrong. I do not intend to defend any one of them. Their corruption, the moral decadence, their association with crime, the shameless nepotism and their arrogance, all of them annoy me as much as they irk you, or maybe even more. And again, no, I do not favour the redistribution of wealth, socialism or communism. Because not all mansions carry such a bad reputation in my eyes. There are some clean properties that need to be kept apart from the corrupt ones, for example, the 300 kanal luxury home that crowns the hills of Bani Gala. I think that is a legitimate palace, the only one in the country.

And, yes, corruption needs to be contained and the people responsible for mishandling public money should be brought to justice, no argument or second opinion about that. I agree 110 percent. The extra 10 percent, by the way, is the reinforcement I get from my family members when I berate politicians in my writings. However, it is one thing to hold them accountable for their misconduct and greed, and yet quite another to rebuke them for things they do not control, the policies they have not handled for decades, the strategy they are as much unaware of as you and me.

And when they try to push those doors open, the ones that have been slammed shut in front of them, they could lose their jobs. Would you want to lose your job for that? Please, do not answer this question because if you said yes, I would know your political identity! Aggrieved myself by such assaults, I understand that every terrorist attack incites an outrage representing failure of the government at some level. Threatened about the security of our own children, we believe these atrocities could have been prevented if we had taken an extra step of caution, if we had been more vigilant or if we had some more information, a name, a place, a time. What I do not understand though is how people decide whom to point their fingers at. Regardless of the process behind it, our commitment to reprimand politicians never changes just as the commitment of the terrorists to attack us never changes.

Quite frankly, the questions we should be asking ourselves after an incident like this are: why do the intelligence agencies fail to provide specific information about such attacks in time? Are we fighting an effective war on terror? Have we done enough to improve the performance of the police? Do we still divide the radicals as a matter of state policy as the ‘good’ Taliban and ‘bad’ Taliban? Are we taking enough action to reduce extremism in society?

But we do not ask any of them. We are too frightened because if we did it could put our patriotism at stake and throw us behind bars too. So, to cover up, we ensure that we erect a number of theories that somehow hint towards foreign involvement, knowing fully well we can do better. It does not matter how unbelievable, these conspiracy theories look we just have to create them and spread them like a plague epidemic.

One theory may go like this: India funded or trained the Taliban to attack Pathankot first so that it could blame Pakistan and then ask the same Taliban to sail into the university and mow down our students. Or it may work like this: the US, after 9/11, funded the Taliban to kill Americans and also trained them to attack the Pakistan army, which is fighting the ‘bad’ Taliban while trying to arrange negotiations with the ‘good’ ones. The US has no problem with this negotiation with them because it was a partner to begin with. Or there is: Mullah Fazlullah, who escaped Pakistan during the Swat operation and who ran his radio broadcast freely from that area, is now supported and sheltered by the Afghanistan government. He conducts these attacks from Afghanistan upon the instruction of his American, Afghan or Indian masters, who want to destabilise Pakistan.

In any case, whatever the conspiracy theory is, people lose lives and their leaders lose their good will, however insignificant that might be. But those who really attacked the students or those who were supposed to prevent it from happening stay free, their reputation riding high.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com