The TTP massacred 140 innocent children at Army Public School Peshawar (APS) on December 16, 2014. The Ulema did not condemn it. Journalists condemned RAW. TTP supporters like General Asad Durrani defended it as ‘business as usual’ saying the carnage was nothing but a ‘collateral damage’. Others of his ilk said the children are martyrs. The parents should be proud of them. To this, a mother replied, she had sent them to school not a battlefield.
The national hero, PTI Chairman Imran Khan, missed the opportunity of saying something. Between 2014 and 2021, he burnt the midnight oil to produce a magical balm –amnesty – that if applied to TTP would instantly heal all the national wounds, internal or external. His invention was patented by three aurvedic vaids: President Arif Alvi, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Sheikh Rashid.
ISPR mourned the loss logically by producing the historic song: Dushman Kay Bachchay Ko Parhana Hay! (Educate the enemy’s child).
Which book of wisdom holds enemy’s child as enemy? The worst enemy and his child have the right to education. Why the focus was shifted to the enemy’s child? Perhaps he did it! Perhaps nobody wants us to spot the elephant in the room. Perhaps it was thought that like 1971, this too will be forgotten. How can mothers forget this cataclysmic day? They denounced Khan publicly.
The TTP has now resurged with a renewed vow to kill men, women, children and elder in every inch of Pakistan most brutally. It proclaimed it the day when we had a new army chief – on November 30 2022. Its action was louder than words. Within hours, there was a suicide attack in Quetta. TTP has carried out seven attacks since the November 30 attack.
The most gruesome took place on December 6. TTP militants stormed the house of an FC soldier in Bannu, KP and they killed him and his son. Beheaded the soldier and hung his head with a tree in Buchki Market. The same day, TTP killed Malik Alamgir Khan, a tribal elder of Mirali North Waziristan who had raised an armed lashkar against the TTP on the Army’s advice.
The bloodshed has failed to the budge the politicians and policymakers. A few days ago, an extension in the army chief’s service was the most important national problem. Now is the dissolution/no dissolution of Punjab/KP assemblies. The new army chief has taken aim at India. He is determined to thwart any Indian misadventure giving TTP an open field to experiment new aspects of the Jihad 2023.
Analysts say, we can’t fight TTP. We attack them. They hide in Afghanistan. Hot pursuit is impossible. The US chased the Taliban in Pakistan, we had Salala. Our sovereignty was violated. We blocked the Nato supplies and forced the US to apologise. If two super powers like the US and the former USSR could not defeat guerrillas, how can we? We offer TTP an olive branch – talks, money, arms, etc., they pluck every fruit and restart the bloodshed.
But why does the TTP need to hide in Afghanistan? The biggest TTP was Imran Khan as Pakistan’s prime minister when he was offering it amnesty. His cabinet was the TTP that was supporting the theory of pardon.
The TTP is our cricket team who instead of practicing the game preaches religion in the field. Every single cleric in Deobandi mosques and seminaries is the TTP. In a such a situation, the best solution is ISPR song. But the conundrum is: which education? The one chief minister Punjab Chaudhry Pervez Elahi is imposing? He has restored the Quran Board. Now the school/college students will have to read Quran as compulsory subject otherwise they will not be given admissions in the engineering and medical universities. He is determined to produce an army of Islamic scholars to make Pakistan an economic and military superpower. ‘The prayers of ulema are easing our miseries!’ He says despite knowing we are heading towards default.
If the rulers want to provide this education, better let the enemy’s child be illiterate because his father was also given the same education that motivated him to join TTP.
We all know that Taliban are the offspring of the Afghan refugees that settled here after the 1979 jihad. Our curriculum is Islamic today and it was so in 1979. We taught B for bombs and J for Jihad and F for fidayeen. And now Chief Minister Pervaz Elahi of the PML Q is adamant to give our kids the same education in the 21st century. Do it and there will be more and more massacres like APS. Keep on feeding the snakes with your hands and they will keep on biting the same hands!
A new operation has to be launched soon.
Just another operation won’t suppress them.