Pakistan’s terrorism fears rife after another APS-like incident
Schools, colleges, universities have immunity. They are the places which can not be attacked even when a war is going on. But, in Pakistan, the situation is totally opposite. Only STUDENTS are attacked.
The agony of carrying 147 small coffins was still fresh on our minds when another APS happened. 21 killed and more than 50 got injured. Like Army Public School’s massacre, the martyrs of Bacha Khan University didn’t step out of their homes to take part in any Jihad. They were students. They were sent to an educational institution by their mothers with lots of expectations. The expectations which were shattered by none other than their own state. The expectation to protect their children.
Military courts established, Rangers given powers (in a province), 330 death row prisoners hanged. But what has been achieved? The fear of venturing out of your home and not returning back in one piece are still very much there.
HOW these students can feel safe when the Interior Minister claims #ISIS has no existence but a Maulvi on every Friday fearlessly preaches about the Islamic State in the state’s capital? Videos of his followers pledging oath to #IS surfaces, but no action is taken. MPs provide evidence against him, walk out of the houses as a protest, but yet fail to make the Interior Minister act.
Maulvi Abdus Salam, Hazrat Ali, Mujeebur Rehman and Sabeel alias Yahya, Dr Usman, Arshad Mehmood, Zubair Ahmed alias Tauseef, Ikhlas Ahmed alias Roosi, Ghulam Sarwar and Rashid Mehmood alias Teepu Niaz Mohammad and few more. Out of 330 people executed since 16th December 2014, hardly twenty to twenty-five are militants. Many of them are still in our jails, where they might be planning another “tragedy”.
HOW can these students can feel safe when even after 3 days of a gruesome tragedy like Bacha Khan University? The Interior Minister remains missing and doesn’t care about answering to the nation on how WE failed again, and why his claims regarding eradication of terrorism have remained mere claims?
Book in one hand and chalk in another – this is how a teacher should be delivering the lecture. But, today, teachers have to bring guns with themselves for the protection. HOW will these students not be fearful after seeing these guns? While we desire to see “Dushman k bachy ko perhana hy” who, to quote Anwar Maqsood, “is so witty that has spread from school to university within a year”, our own kids because of continuous threats from the militants and our continuous failures to protect them are finding it so hard to be “perhay howay”.
In these “hows” lies the failure of “very much successful’ National Action Plan. It would not be successful until the authorities would get able to answer these “hows”, and for that it necessary that National Action Plan should be taken to other provinces also, because Pakistan consists of not only one province.