Blood and Tears

 So they came back. To take revenge they say. And this time they butchered innocent children. Can you believe that? Yes children. Innocent children. Deliberately massacred. Over a hundred of them. This was something greater and uglier than anyone had anticipated.

It was heart wrenching. I remember I was in the class and I heard it from a friend. It filled me with pain I cannot explain in words. I couldn’t bring myself to hear or see more. The images on my Twitter and Facebook newsfeed were too overwhelming.

 I couldn’t go near the TV that day where our media as usual was busy in its senseless sensationalism and their hunger for more ratings which never stops them to make a mockery of events as sensitive as this.

 It was like this for everyone who heard about it. Agonizing pain. Ah the cruelty! Come to think of it. It reminds one of the Nazis gassing the innocent children in the concentrations camps.

And then our overly emotional nation and its reactions. This is by no means an attempt to offend the emotions of the people. Of course the loss is too great for words, but the point here is that the very nation which mourns and cries with such intensity, goes all berserk protesting, but then forgets it completely within days. How easily we move on is one of the many tragedies of our nation.

And this will happen again. Whether we like it or not, this is bound to happen. We have short memories and time has proved this.

But right now the momentum is very high. It’s riding on a very strong current. There’s this galvanizing support for eradicating this menace once and for all. One reflection of it is the demand to publicly hang the terrorists which is getting popular and stronger.

But will it hold? Will it be different this time? Will we be able to hold it longer and just not let the moment pass? Only time can tell.

There have been demonstration and protests of all sort and they continue in full swing to this moment. From prayers to candle light vigils, form changing profile pictures on social media to black and holding rallies, there has been no dearth of protest and condemnation. Here one gets a flashback of same kind of anger and protest on the nation about 3 years back when a 14 year old girl was shot in broad day light. It was a similar energy. We saw the whole nation unite. There were protests and prayers and then within days it fizzled out.

But then we have another problem. Even if the people refuse to let go and the pressure sustains will it really lead to some real change? Will it make the establishment wake up now? It is not easy to see something productive coming out of it.

There seems to be not much hope. If it was about waking up and changing your priorities then it would have happened a long time ago. Wasn’t the massacre of Hazara community in Quetta enough, the mass killings of innocent civilians in the cities, the targeted killings of Shias in buses, the ruthless killing of minorities, the attacks on our bases and airports? There is a never ending list of countless men women and children who have died. The loss is just so great that no matter what is done it just cannot be compensated. But the truth is that it just has not been enough. The blood has been spilled, the cries and shrieks have even crossed the heavens and the tears have dried up but it just has not been enough. There have been resolves but none of them ever too convincing to wipe it out once and for all. There has been this habit of the establishment to make a distinction between good animals and bad animals. And of course why not make distinctions when you need the good animals for your adventures here and there; when you are a security state obsessed with your strategic goals; when the state is more important the very people who inhabit it.

So why complain when your monsters attack you? Why cry when you yourself have been the hand feeding them?

And this is it which brings us to the real problem of Pakistan. This is which needs to change. The priorities, the mindset, the agenda, and the objectives everything needs to be revamped. We cannot just afford to play at both sides of the field. We just cannot afford the outsourcing of militancy any more, we just cannot afford any more proxies. This is has been too much now. Just one shade of it can be seen in how a cleric sitting in the heart of the capital is openly refusing to condemn the attack and is getting airtime on prime time TV.

Without this vital and urgent shift in the policy, all the protest, all the demonstrations, the prayers, the blood the tears everything will be in vain again. It is from this power center in Pakistan that any real change can come and it is now or never for the masters to realize that can the dark monsters engulf the very existence of the state. It is time a firm resolve is made once and for all before it’s too late.

Without this there seems to be only more blood and tears and no hope for Pakistan.