At a safe distance – again

The average age of the six soldiers killed in this case came to 28. The eldest of them was only 37 and the youngest was 22. Three of them were in their 20s only. For those who failed to take proper notice of the incident, and especially for those in power who must not be allowed to summarily dismiss these tragic facts, this was a group of fighters who lay their lives down in North Waziristan.

Now a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the defunct agency territory is ‘trying’ to defeat an upsurge in violence. In the incident on Thursday, three militants were killed, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR. More precisely the ISPR statement said, “Three terrorists were sent to hell…” – showing the ‘sentiment’ against the militants who raised their head again a few months ago.

Despite this heavy loss, the news was overwhelmed by some other events on a day when teachers had also come under attack in the province, more than five of them dying by firing by unknown assailants in two incidents.

The information about the unfortunate incident was accompanied by how the operation continued to flush any militants out of the area. The absence of a representative government in KP is a huge issue and, if for nothing else, the reemergence of terrorism in the region in itself should be sufficient for all-out efforts for a quick return of elected rule in the province.

KP most certainly has its own peculiar reasons to have people’s reps running its government. But this does not justify the kind of apathy with which terror occurrences in the province continue to be received in the country. It is very disturbing how quickly Pakistanis downstream have slipped inside the old blanket of security. The old protection of terror being a distant phenomenon appears to be back.

The facility with which the false security net has been put up by those living at a safe distance from trouble contrasts with the intent shown by the militants. The severity of the problem has been increasing. There has been a whole series of these terror instances. In his first press briefing recently, Director General of ISPR Maj Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry listed 293 people as dead and 521 others injured in 436 terrorist incidents in the country over the past year. ‘In KP alone’, 192 people lost their lives in 219 terror activities. Some 80 people were killed in “206 incidents in Balochistan, 14 people in five attacks in Punjab, and seven in six terrorism incidents across Sindh.”

The ISPR chief said “…that the army and law enforcement agencies carried out 8,269 intelligence-based operations during the previous year in which 1,378 suspected terrorists were apprehended and 157 were killed” – most of them in KP. “The DG ISPR had also said that overall 137 security personnel were martyred and 117 injured in anti-terror operations in the ongoing year.”

Once again, since most of these operations had to take place in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, this contributed to the conveniently-arrived at conclusion in Lahore, Multan and Hyderabad and beyond that they were not threatened by the danger or at least not threatened seriously enough.

If those up in the northwest are for some reason not worthy of our support, our experience of how and how fast terror can and does travel to ‘our’ neighbourhood should have been sufficient reason for Pakistanis outside KP to be concerned about it. But just how we want to be taken over by self-created aloofness is evident from just how little reaction the instances of militancy-related violence is most evident in the everyday social media responses of Pakistanis by and large.

The kind of condemnation has been sorely missing just as was the case even before the social media revolution. Quite visibly, the long strengthened notions in self preservation nurtured by geographic divisions and ethnic and cultural differences are hindering certain group-makings here.

The global village is beset with provincial boundaries. It is possible for even groups and parties to delink from an adjoining area, even if in thought only. More than that, that this separation is deemed necessary is explained by the actions of popular leaders such as Imran Khan.

What stopped Khan Sahab from asking for demos against militancy in Karachi and Lahore etc to coincide with the protest led by Murad Saeed in Swat following explosions at a Swat police station? This is suspicious. Maybe Imran Khan also subscribes to the ‘regionality of the threat’ and understands the benefits of coming up with different reactions for different provinces.

Most certainly, this aloofness – this safe parting from the danger zone – is aided by those who must tackle it with old logic that should have been rejected by now. By some strange application of reason, even today you will run into experts who use such terms as ‘containing terror’ (within a specific area) rather than replacing the word ‘containment’ with ‘elimination’ in their diary. There is no bigger cause that feeds the convenient perceptions of safety among fellow Pakistanis away from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The writer is a senior journalist.