When death stands at the door

Can countries commit suicide? Yes they can. We have proven that by becoming a nation that is killing its people in many different ways – one by one. We mourn the deaths of some louder than those of others. Sabeen Mahmud’s terrifying killing took away one of our most vibrant citizens, a rebel since she was a teen. It also delivered a clear message, a crystal clear message, written on every bullet pumped into the body of the young woman.
We have read that message; most of us understand it and almost all of us will act according to what it says. This of course is the purpose of delivering it. The black thread of fear has been wound tightly around our country. We breathe now with more difficulty, gasping to breathe in the air required to keep us alive. Too often, we fail.
Death comes in many forms, terrible forms not the natural ones that form a part of the cycle of life, and can strike anywhere, at any time. It struck several weeks ago on a street in Lahore when Mustafa Kanju, the privileged son of a former minister and brother of a sitting PML-N MNA, became enraged after a minor accident and used his kalashnikov to fire bullets that killed a 16-year-old motorcyclist, Zain, who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Kanju has been arrested; the family of Zain, a fatherless student, is said to be under acute pressure to reach a ‘settlement’ and this of course is a familiar pattern.
Sons of the powerful have killed before; the deeply flawed ‘diyat’ law allows them to get away by paying out money; and threats can of course ‘help’ the families of victims accept the money on offer. The rich then have been literally granted a licence to kill – and they use it frequently.
They are others with licences too. We have seen them utilise these. Our failure to prevent the Islamic State organisation from entering our country, despite the numerous prior warnings that it was knocking – loudly – at our door will only mean more death, more funerals and another step towards suicide. The first killing openly claimed by IS has already taken place in Karachi this month, where Deborah Lobo, an American national and the vice principal of the Jinnah Medical and Dental College was gunned down on her way home from work. Leaflets left at the site by IS claimed she was killed in revenge for the death of five Taliban militants by security forces in Keamari.
The gentle Ms Lobo, 55, a missionary much loved by the students she advised, had lived in Pakistan since 1998 and visited before this. She was marked for death solely on the basis of her American nationality. The world of groups such as the IS is painted in black and white – but mainly black. Others such as aid worker Warren Weinstein, kidnapped by militant from Lahore in 2011 and ironically enough killed a week ago in a US drone attack on the Pak-Afghan border, aged 73, have been targeted for the same reasons.
We have other kinds of death too, killing our nation and much of what exists within it. The brutal massacre of 20 labourers at their camp near Turbat in Balochistan, on the basis that they were ‘outsiders’, demonstrates the situation of a nation bent on self-destruction. The workers, from Sindh and Punjab, were of course doing nothing more than trying to eke out a living. The killing by motorcyclists who rode up to the camp follows previously established patterns. It is unforgivable.
But there is reason to ask if a military operation in the province will really solve anything at all. We have seen such operations take place before. They have given rise to still greater venom and frustration, and we already have far too much poison flowing through the veins of our country.
The poison is not always easily visible. It sometimes kills almost silently, in deaths that attract no headlines, and go unnoticed by the vast majority of us. In hospitals around the country, infants die of malnutrition every day. We have amongst the highest child and infant mortality rates in the world – with lack of food being a major contributor to these. Families are simply unable to feed themselves and the struggle to survive and manage on what is available is an arduous one which takes a huge toll on health and on life.
The fact that nearly half of Pakistani children today suffer wasting: a failure to gain expected weight for age, or stunting: a failure to gain expected height for age is a frightening reality. Studies suggest it is also beginning to affect mental agility. We are, in other words, systematically killing our children by refusing to take the steps that would provide them food, healthcare and meet other basic needs. A strategy that makes this a priority and encompasses reproductive health has become a necessity.
We have all around us a sea of dying people and we lack the wisdom to put in place systems that could create greater equity and prevent the suffering we witness. The rich remain unwilling to pay taxes; this is one reason why the crime rate has grown so rapidly and we have since Partition failed to implement the land reforms that could change the fate of the majority. Very few of us really understand quite how this majority lives, or fails to live, or the fact that quite simply a huge number in our country are unable to do so with any measure of dignity. Too many rely on philanthropy to get by. Others do not get by. The state has failed to help them or come to their rescue in their times of greatest need. This is a failure that simply cannot be overlooked any longer. It contributes to other failures.
Conflict causes death too. We see it in our tribal belt and in other parts of the country where innocent citizens also become victims of wars beyond their control. Unsafe water, unsafe food and simply the polluted air we breathe contribute also to death. The situation is worst for those who labour in factories and mines.
We do nothing about this. We have become accustomed to living with death; with allowing it to wrap its sable web all around us and determine when to suffocate the victims. As a result, we are asphyxiating ourselves. We are snuffing out the life and light that still exists and creating pitch darkness within which nothing can bloom or grow.
Virtually all forms of life need light; they need the sun to shine on them and we have shrouded the sun so that it is unable to shine, creating a kind of permanent gloom that results in individuals, groups and sometimes specific communities plunging into varying states of grief.
Overall, however, this does nothing to bring about any change in our reality or prevent us from moving steadily closer to the abyss over which, like lemmings, we seem determined to throw ourselves down into a deep and certain end. We need to lift ourselves above the lemmings by acting more wisely and more rationally in order to save ourselves.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com