Parachinar’s pain

It has been nearly a week since the twin bombings at Parachinar killed nearly 100 people. Since then, people of the area and the families of the victims alongside tribal elders have been protesting, sitting out on the streets with the bodies of the men, women and children who died. What they seek is some recognition of their suffering. They want to know why they have been left to fend for themselves in a place that has repeatedly been attacked. They demand action not just against those responsible but for the state to also accept its responsibility. In the terrible aftermath of the Parachinar bloodshed, no major dignitary traveled up to the tribal areas adjoining the Afghanistan border. Media coverage, too, was scant. The current weather, logistics and the remoteness of the area were certainly a factor in that but there should be no excuses in the face of such human tragedy. The people of Parachinar, a Shia majority town which has faced bombing after bombing over the past decade and more, deserve better. They deserve dignity; they deserve respect; they deserve sympathy. Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa has denounced sectarianism in the country and emphasised that every person who is killed is equal regardless of their belief. This, of course, is undoubtedly true. This is also exactly what the protesters are stating. They are also saying that they do not feel like they are treated equally when they become victims of terrorism. The COAS has also said that there is a sectarian campaign being pursued on social media and that efforts to malign the Pakistan Army are afoot. It is, again, undeniably true that a lot of sectarian hate is being spewed. The question is who the victim is and who the victimiser is in this campaign and, more importantly, who the authorities may go after, if they do, to check the dangerous trend. A minority has been targeted over and over again since the 1980s, perhaps initially because of a political battle for power in which sectarianism was encouraged, but which has now gone beyond all control. More and more splinter groups following extremist ideologies now target the many groups they label infidels. Those who have suffered bloodshed may understandably get angry; but what about those who are calling for murder and mayhem and suggesting the “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi treatment” for “traitors and agents”. They roam freely, are public figures and known for their pro-terrorist sectarian madness. Nobody has ever touched them, while others — relative non-entities — have been ‘picked up’ on charges that were never made official. Will the unassailable ever be touched and called to account?   

Sectarianism is not a product of this or that incident today. Divisions have existed in our society since forever; the worsening of these divisions has been primarily a result of the kind of politics allowed by the state to flourish, nurtured and encouraged in this country in the past decades. We are inevitably reaping what we strategically sowed. And it would be a foolish enemy who did not take advantage of this situation, with the whole region having entered a phase of violent uncertainty and with the most hostile of our adversaries facing a freedom movement in Kashmir. The regional situation beyond India does not help either. We appear to be caught in the midst of the war being fought between Saudi Arabia and Iran; and such a conflict has always involved proxies. How our interests have been served by former army chief Raheel Sharif joining the Saudi-led military alliance is a point we can’t stop pondering even as we repeat some other relevant questions for the umpteenth time: what has become of the implementation of NAP? What about the decision to make Nacta functional? Operation Zarb-e-Azb was, again and again, said to have met its objectives by the state that is a ‘frontline’ one in the fight against terror. What does our inability to act against front-line figures in sectarian hate-mongering say? Parachinar is part of Pakistan’s tribal hinterlands; what can the government say about reneging on the promise of reforms for Fata? Parachinar’s pain and anger is easy to understand in view of the violence its people have been experiencing. The optics of no national leader visiting Parachinar could not have eased their pain and killed their anger. It could only have led to a deepening of their alienation. The failure here is not restricted to one political party or one institution and everyone needs to try and rectify that. What they should not do is use the pain inflicted on Parachinar to play politics.