APS — A Year On
Tauseef-ur-Rahman
PESHAWAR: Screaming mothers hugging the bodies of their teenage sons, frantic fathers searching for their children, removing shrouds from dead bodies lined up in hospital where they were first brought. A grim identification parade, people moving from body to body, dreading the worst but relived if a child wasn’t theirs. Until they removed one cover to expose a face they knew as their own.
Sobbing nurses busy taking care of the wounded; weeping rescue workers bringing in more bodies of uniformed children. The chaos of desperate parents and guardians at the gate and in the hospital wards amidst cries of the wounded. And the dazed media persons covering the incident with eyes welled-up with tears as people silently side-stepping to avoid the blood on the floor.
A year to the darkest day in Pakistan’s history — December 16 — since the dead and wounded schoolchildren of the army run school in the north west of the country were brought to hospitals, these images still haunt me.
Last year, on December 16, more than 140 people were killed, mostly children in the most savage attack by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an extremist group fighting for imposition of their version of Sharia in the country.
In my head still echoes the long, shattering wail of the mother who, shivering in silence, removed blood stained shrouds from one body after another in search of her child. After removing a cover, she found her teenage son, cold and dead on the floor. She held him in her arms and with a heart wrenching scream, she said, (In Pashto language),“Wai khudaya, za kho tabah shom” — (Oh God, I am devastated!). Her wails pierced through those around and no one who was there could keep from breaking down, in sympathy, in horror.
In the last fifteen years, I have covered dozens of deadly attacks, often reporting from hospitals. But nothing shook me to the core as the horrific sorrow of parents that permeated the air in the hospital I had gone that day. Not the least because I am a parent myself.
All around the city, grief congealed in the dark cold evening, the horror of innocent children butchered by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan curdling on the roads, in streets and homes, and in hearts who could find nothing else but disbelief in their hearts for the slaughter.
The day after was one of funerals — more than a hundred of them because close to 130 children were killed — and that was perhaps worse than the night before. There was hardly a neighbourhood where a funeral of an innocent child was not held. If the smallest coffins are the heaviest, the folks in Peshawar carried many on their shoulders that day as they rallied around each other to stand up to a grief so profound, an injury so shattering to the heart and soul, that it still hurts a year on and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
For the first anniversary of that terrible day, the media circus has already kicked off with TV anchors demanding from their correspondents in Peshawar to bring emotional footage of families crying and and expressing their grief. The drive to improve ratings has become so predatory, it doesn’t shy away from raising the dead.
The top civil and military officials are all set to throng the lawns of the ill-fated Army Public School on December 16.The electronic media will run special programmes commemorating the sacrifice of innocent souls by trying to make their programmes as emotional as they can. The civil society will arrange vigils across the country in memory of the day that should have changed Pakistan.
But, the covertly managed media — that includes the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the PR arm of the almighty military — will never raise questions about unfortunate parents demanding a judicial inquiry into the security lapse and fix responsibility. They will also not discuss the inaction of the state and the government on the much trumpeted National Action Plan, announced soon after the gory incident.
The tragedy was so colossal that it culminated in the unity of political forces and security agencies. For once, even the Taliban apologists were silenced as they shared the grief of the nation. An All Party’s Conference was held to give all-out-support to security forces to rid the country of the scourge of terrorism and extremism. A National Action Plan was chalked out to deal specifically with terrorism. The moratorium on death penalty was lifted and military courts established initially to try terrorism cases — later extended to other cases too.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 302 people have been hanged till December 2, 2015. However, 21 of them were related to attacks on General Musharraf, military officials, policemen, former chief minister of Punjab Ghulam Haider Wayen, hijacking of a PIA plane in 1998 whereas four of them were those involved in the gruesome attack on army-run-school. The remaining 281 were hanged for murders of family members, kidnapping and murder, murder during theft and personal enmities.
Though the one year since that terrible tragedy last December, have we taken to task all the extremist forces and defeated the militant mindset for which we set up the military courts, resumed death penalty and chalked out a National Action Plan? Have the state and society challenged that extremist narrative? Has the much vaunted NAP succeeded in combating the menace?
According to Dr Khadim Hussain, a renowned scholar, “the narrative that took the lives of children in Peshawar on December 16 has not yet been fully challenged by the state.”
“Hate against ‘the other’ continues in public schools, madrassas and mainstream Urdu media,” says Hussain.
The space for private jihadism has not yet shrunk and the militant economy continues to flourish. Similarly, there is still no clarity about action against ‘good taliban’. The recent coffins of ‘mujahedeen’ brought to Upper and Lower Dir from Afghanistan has testified the fact that large number of people from Pakistan are still crossing the border and joining Afghan ‘mujahedeen’ to fight against the ‘infidels’.
These people were killed in a drone strike on a training camp in the eastern province of Khost near Pak-Afghan border. Their coffins were draped with flag of Al-Badr Mujahdeen, a militant organisation affiliated with Taliban. The military establishment kept mum over the incident.
Similarly, the recent shoot-out among the Afghan Taliban leaders near Quetta also substantiated the fact that ‘good taliban’ are still enjoying patronage of the powers that be, even though the Pakistani intelligence officials denied any such incident and blamed Kabul for spreading rumors.
The state has made progress on some of the 20 points of NAP, says Hussain, but important aspects like hate speech, madrassah reforms and action against banned outfits remain elusive.
Similarly, it was decided under NAP to take forward administrative reforms if Federally Administered Tribal Area bordering Afghanistan with a focus on immediate return of IDPs, but there is yet to be any progress on this front.
No step has been so far taken to reform criminal justice system, another point of the NAP. It was also decided to activate NACTA but the fate of this body is still shrouded in mystery, says Hussain.
One cannot exempt the civilian government for its lack of will to implement the NAP in true letter and spirit. The ISPR press release issued after the November 10 Corps Commander Conference termed the progress on implementation of NAP as an issue which could undermine the effects of operations.
Such statement from the military establishment expressed its displeasure over inaction of the civilian government on NAP. It appears that some political forces are still averse to take strong measures against the Taliban because of their scandalous links with the extremists’ forces, be it in Punjab or in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
One of the important points of the NAP was to take effective steps against religious persecution. However, the state of minorities in Pakistan has remained unchanged as persecution of Shias, Ahmadis and Christians continued unabated. The blast on December 13 in Parachinar, a shia dominated area, resulted in killing of more than two dozen poor people in a market. The Jhelum attack on a place of worship of Ahmadi community, and a number of attacks on Christians paint a dismal picture.
It appears that the security establishment is still in dilemma. Establishing military courts is a tactical approach rather than a holistic strategic policy. The recent terror incidents in Afghanistan, the shoot-out of Afghan Taliban near Quetta and the coffins of Al Badr Mujahedeens brought to Pakistan is the continuation of the “strategic depth” approach. It is a self-defeating approach that, if not stopped, will continue to bring more destruction and miseries to people of the country, particularly to Pakhtuns, who already faced the worst wrath of this policy.
“Until an alternative narrative in education, media and state institutions is constructed and spread, until the militant economy is choked and until space for private jihadism is shrunk, the state and the society of Pakistan and the states of the region will continue to suffer from the cancer of extremist violence and terrorism,” says Hussain.
This December, the civil and military establishment must show its will to take on all extremist forces, shed its dual policy of supporting or ignoring some militant outfits while launching operations on others. We will continue to lose our children in bloodbaths similar to APS and other, less known and seen places where they go to wage Jihad, if we fail to defeat the violent and retrogressive mindset. More than the media opportunity to claim the limelight, this December we should quietly and sincerely resolve to deal with the discourse that encourage and spread hate and extremist views, be it in mosques, madrassahs or in mainstream media.
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