No lessons learnt

The latest television footage and the videos put out on social media show us images of school life continuing as normal at the Army Public School in Peshawar where nearly 150 people, the vast majority of them children, were massacred in December 2014.

The rhetoric we have woven into the tragedy speaks of the children as ‘little soldiers’, or ‘martyrs’, who gave their lives as a part of the fight against terrorism. In truth, they were victims of a terrible crime committed against them. They were not at school with the purpose of taking on armed, masked gunmen or combating militancy. Nor did they attempt to fight the trained extremists who barged into their school just as the day began.

There is a tragedy within the tragedy. Many of us had hoped that in the shocked aftermath of December 16, 2014, some lessons would be learned and political parties as well as other groups would come together to make a true effort to end militancy and the extremist mindsets that support it. There is little evidence that this has happened. As has been pointed out by politicians including Asfandyar Wali and by the Peshawar High Court, which is hearing a petition brought by the father of one of the children who died seeking justice in the case, very little has really happened.

The agreements made between political parties in the form of the National Action Plan drawn up in the immediate aftermath of the massacre have not been implemented. There has been very little genuine effort to curb the spread of hatred or to defeat militancy in all its forms. Worse still, it has taken the PHC to order that Ehsanullah Ehsan, the former Taliban spokesman and leader of Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, who had surrendered himself to security forces in April 2017 and confessed to planning the APS killing, remain in custody and not be released.

Simply the possibility that this could happen given that Ehsan is also known to be involved in a series of other killings should be enough to shock us. We wonder why a trial has not taken place. As parents of the APS victims said at a gathering at the end of 2017, months after he was in the hands of security agencies, this may bring some solace to families who still grieve. It may also put the truth before all. NAP laid out at the time had also stressed the urgency of the situation and the need to defeat hatred at all levels. There has been no effort to remove hate literature against minority groups or other elements in society which still appears on widely distributed pamphlets, CDs, social media and at sermons delivered at some mosques.

According to some of the latest information from social media monitoring groups, Pakistan is a country that removes maximum content from sites such as Facebook. However, a huge amount of hate material remains untouched. The story of victims, in a country that has suffered far worse than any other as a result of militancy, has meanwhile been twisted to suit other interests or to disguise the true degree of horror involved in the events that have periodically taken place.

It is true, as a recent tweet from powerful sources said, that we are a resilient nation. One of the victims of the APS Peshawar attack, Waleed Ahmed, who at the age of 13 had most of his face blown away by terrorist bullets and was left for dead as paramedics removed those still alive for treatment, has in a television interview praised his nation for providing so much love and so much support to the children killed at APS.

Four years later, Waleed himself has undergone extensive surgery in Birmingham, where he was taken along with several other seriously injured victims for treatment with the help of an NGO and the support of authorities. Today, he is the captain of his school cricket team, the head boy of his school council in Birmingham and active in a range of other activities. He, along with other victims, including the three students studying at the Birmingham school, have received extensive support and help from the family of Malala Yousafzai, especially her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who both know what it is like to be so badly damaged by the bullets of terrorists.

We need to learn our lessons. Yes, the parents of the APS Peshawar victims and the pupils who survived, like the now 17-year-old Waleed, have been extraordinarily brave and dignified in the aftermath of what happened. The family of the principal of the school, Tahira Qazi, who died in the attack, have also been active in helping as many victims as they can and helping identify the children most in need of medical or psychological help overseas. Just like Malala Yousafzai, these children need a safe place where they can receive specialised help and an environment that can enable them to live out the rest of their childhood without fear.

We should however remember there are differences in the cases. Malala was deliberately targeted because of her actions as an activist who spoke out for the education of girls and against the Taliban. The unfortunate victims of the APS attack happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their stories and those of their parents are undoubtedly harrowing. They are, however, different in essence from the story of Malala.

Among the lessons we need to absorb is the ability to face up to the truth and not to attempt to sugar coat it. What we have faced in the past and continue to face today is a vicious force which believes life is dispensable. This force lives on in our country today. It lives in the form of those who argue that alleged blasphemers should be instantly killed or others put to death simply on the basis of their belief. It is true some efforts have been made, including the arrest of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan Chief Khadim Rizvi and his closest associates, to defeat these elements, but the battle will need to be fought on many fronts.

Changing mindsets is perhaps the hardest task of all. This is especially true of a society that has faced consistent brainwashing since the 1980s when a new ideology put forward in the guise of religion was presented to the nation by the late General Ziaul Haq. The problems it has created are immense. We see them everywhere around us.

It should not take an attack like the one at APS Peshawar to highlight the reality we live with. Instead, like the children who continue with their lessons, some of them in classrooms where bullets whizzed through the air, we must find ways to re-educate people and spread the message of tolerance and co-existence rather than death. This can only happen step by step. It should begin by ensuring the contents of NAP go beyond the paper the document was written out on.

The current government will have to take the lead in this so that extremism can be stripped away and a safer environment created for all our children everywhere in our country.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com