More than a month after the deadly attack on Army Public School Peshawar, the tragedy is still under thick impenetrable clouds. The uncertainty about what the Prime Minister termed ‘a national tragedy’ persists with no one even making an effort to fathom.
According to umpteen media reports about the December 16th attack, all one could gather was, some terrorists came to the school situated in the Cantonment area, burned their car in front of the school in order to divert attention, scaled the rear wall of the school, cut down the barbed wires, broke into the premises, threw in some hand grenades, opened fire and killed as many as 150 people including 135 children.
If one tries to gather some more details from the victims’ parents and media persons reporting on the tragedy, moving beyond these broader contours of the attack becomes even more difficult realising that there exist so many conflicting reports about basic facts. It becomes particularly perturbing to see that no state institution is providing information about official account of what happened, how and when alongside what is now happening to investigate whose negligence or incompetency or complicity it could be.
This is being considered by scores of media reports and analysis pieces, Pakistan’s most deadly attack so far. There have been gorier attacks on Pakistani civilians ever since the state decided to take assorted terrorist groups under its patronage. In the Karsaz tragedy back in 2007, more than 150 people were killed and as many were left incapacitated. In Laki Marwat, a Volley Ball stadium was attacked leaving more than a hundred dead in 2010. More than a hundred died after two Ahmadi worship places were attacked the same year in Lahore. Around fifty died, mostly women and children, in an attack on Data Darbar in Lahore that year. Another 120 died in a village in Mohmand Agency. More than two hundred died in Quetta in two bomb blasts targeting Shia Hazara community of Quetta in 2013. A college bus of girls was attacked in Quetta killing more than 50 girls. Around 80 people killed in the attack on a Church in Peshawar, as many – mostly women and children – died in Mina Bazar and Qissa Khwani bazar attacks.
It did not end there. I haven’t included dozens of other deadly attacks on Shia community in Karachi, Quetta and other parts where we lost hundreds of precious lives. But as a fortunate surprise, Pakistani nation was shaken and woken up from long slumber, after this recent attack like it never has been. No amount of the blood of Shias, the Ahmadis, the Hindus, the Christians and of the people in general attacks on mosques, markets, madrassas etc had ever traumatised us like we are now. We had to lose those innocent 150 in order to reach this fragmented ‘consensus’ to fight the terror.
Now that it has happened, why waste this consensus on concepts as meaningless as lifting the moratorium on death penalty or establishment of military courts or ‘proscribing’ our ‘former friends’ or freezing the accounts of those who we ‘look up’ to in ‘difficult times’? Claiming that the military-led courts are going to be of immediate help in dealing with terrorism is nothing but a flimsy excuse of diverging the attention from the core issue our state appears to be avoiding.
If the government and / or the army is now serious, lets have a small litmus test. No, I’m not talking about the arrest of Mulla Abdul Aziz. That was another edge that civil society let itself slip, digressed from the central issue and there we all missed the point. Arrest of Mulla Aziz will be an important milestone, no doubt. But a greater milestone would be if the state establishes its writ on Lal Masjid, brings it under state’s control, appoints a khateeb who pledges allegiance to the state and the Constitution of Pakistan instead of ISIS. For a change!
Perhaps another bigger milestone and one of the most important litmus tests would be if the provincial and the federal governments along with the military leadership establish a Commission of Inquiry that investigates the Peshawar attack and fixes the responsibility for the security lapse. The Commission could comprise retired or serving judges who could then assign different aspects of investigation and fact finding to police, NACTA, investigating experts, independent and credible personalities from bodies like HRCP etc.
Army, which is now a changed institution, as we understand from repeated statements from the COAS and the head of ISPR, would have no issue in presenting itself for accountability. Especially when the accountability is being sought for an attack we are dubbing as most deadly one in country’s recent history. Also, when such an investigation is expected to generate important body of knowledge about the kind of lapses our system carries, it is certainly going to be useful in preventing future attacks. No?
Why this Inquiry Commission is most pressing need of the hour and most important litmus test of our civilian and military leadership’s seriousness and commitment, needs not be overemphasised. The opacity that exists around the attack has to be broken for the sake of the parents who have lost their children and for the traumatised citizenry. It is important because the apathy of state persists because those who run the state have never been held accountable for their mistakes and crimes.
If the allegedly rigged elections are as important as to attract thousands (?) of people sitting under the sky days and night for more than four months and demand a Judicial Commission, if the head of self-proclaimed ‘most popular’ political party could go on about such a Commission to investigate elections rigging even when he visits aggrieved parents of slain children, one wonders why can’t any of the political leaders demand this inquiry?
Considering we live in a republic, that too a democratic one, aren’t the citizens justified if they demand to know better?
About the author: Marvi Sirmed is an Islamabad based freelance columnist who can be accessed atmarvisirmed@gmail.com or on Twitter at: @marvisirmed
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About AHRC:The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
