Pakistan’s Crucible: The Peshawar School Massacre - Part I
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“There comes a time in the affairs of men when you must take the bull by the tail and face the situation”. - W. C. Fields
Nations and people make mistakes due to two factors. They either misjudge things by over-estimating or underestimating themselves; or they just remain paralyzed, like a Wildebeest due to their own self-conceived fears, and weaknesses. A Wildebeest is not a small or a weak animal. It is only a little shorter than a cow. As one gamekeeper explained, it is a strange animal. It runs like other animals when chased by a predator, but it is so dumb that it soon loses sight of what had inspired it to run, and then it stops right next to the predator in a most meditative and appreciative mood, completely forgetting that it is the same predator that had frightened him to run a few minutes ago.
Half a dozen political parties that favored talks with the Taliban possessed that kind of Wildebeest mentality. They did so not because they were optimistic enough to find some medicinal vaccine out of the poisonous weeds; they like the Wildebeest were habitual of forgetting “Why they had started talks in the first place?” Ask any GD Pilot in the Pakistan Air Force and he would tell you one thing: “Anything is better than crashing”. Not so with the Pakistani politicians for whom often crashing remains the only option. Since rising upward toward a peak, toward a positive, constructive, life-affirming goal requires effort, sacrifice and initiative, leaders in Pakistan often opt for moving toward a pit, toward an inauthentic, life-destroying negative goal by following some negative, intellectually sterile role-models, as would say, Danny Cox in his book, ”There Are No Limits.”
The result has been obvious. One disaster succeeded another bigger disaster, till a whole-sale, massacre took place at an army public school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014. Nobody resigned; nobody was asked to resign and nobody felt that he should have resigned. Lovers of “talks” with the hard-core murderers, both inside and outside the government, conveniently adjusted and shifted their gears; softened their narratives, and stayed where they had been, wrapped in their usual state of cozy “heedlessness”, keeping alive and fresh their inherent sympathies for those whose cause they had so shamelessly espoused all along. The Taliban have had a history of targeting the country’s pupils, says the Economist of December 20, 2014. “In the four years to 2013, when their writ ran large, they destroyed over 1,000 schools and colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”. Ahmed Rashid, an analyst of the Taliban, says “the massacre in Peshawar was symbolic of hatred for everything that Malala stands for”. Malala was shot in 2012. An unhappy retired army officer is right when he says, "I am not sure if Pakistan was created in the name of religion, but it is surely being destroyed in the name of religion.”
William C. Chittick says, “Forgetfulness and heedlessness are fundamental faults because they negate TAWHID. To forget God is to forget oneself… the Qur'an alludes to this perspective in the verse 59:19, 'Be not as those who forgot God, and so He caused them to forget themselves. Those - they are the transgressors.' The irony is that the transgressors are 100 per cent sure that all the rest except them are the transgressors.
A five year old child gets molested in a mosque in Lahore on Thursday, and on Friday hundreds of believers come for the Friday prayers, most of them inquiring first, “Who will deliver the Khutba?, What time the Jumma prayer shall take place?” Hardly anyone heeded what a tragedy had taken place a night before.
But not so with the army. One feels tempted to salute the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, who understood fully well that “Enough is enough”. He moved fast and determinedly, leaving little room for the politicians who master in the art of peeling off the onion of a problem to such an extent that at the end nothing of the problem is left in hand except confusion and disillusionment, and embarrassment. Again like the Wildebeest, completely forgetting what for all the four All Party Conferences had been held, the politicians appear just being ready to come out of their borrowed garbs of unity.
Elbert Hubbard once made a timeless observation when he said,
”Even a dead fish can go down stream; it takes a live one to go against the current.” The lovers of “talks” wanted to build better tomorrows by repeating the dismal yesterdays. Grave-diggers like butchers have one rule: they do not cry; their eyes never get wet. Tears run counter to their profession. Taj Muhammad, the head grave-digger at the famous Rahman Baba Graveyard in Peshawar, says, “I have buried bodies of the deceased of different ages, sizes and weights; Those small bodies I’ve been burying since yesterday felt much heavier than any of the big ones I’ve buried before”. Taj Muhammad says he buried the 105 victims of the Mina Bazaar bombing in 2009; and about 50 of the Khyber Bazaar bombing, but “Tuesday’s bodies were hard to take…I couldn’t control my tears. I cannot explain, but I wept. I know it was against the rules of our profession but it was the moment to break the rules.” Did the politicians, the media and the custodians of law, the lawyers, remain even 10% moved like Taj Muhammad did?
Hamid Mir ran a program on the fall of Pakistan in 1971 highlighting how the Pakistan army fumbled under a dictator; the country’s parliamentarian were seen shedding crocodile tears at the time of the passing of the 21st Amendment. Veterans like Senator Rabbani were heard saying under sobs, “I wish I had not seen this day”; young Bilawal was heard saying, “Today the Parliament lost its nose by consenting to vote in favor of the military courts”. PTI, and the Jamaat e Islami, as expected, played safe by not taking part in the voting. The yoked unity of the country’s leadership even at such a juncture of Pakistan’s history, has already started showing signs of fissure and dissent. It is true, you cannot expect a turtle to act like a race-horse.
The Title of this article is borrowed from Arthur Miller’s famous play, “The Crucible”. A crucible is defined as a ‘severe test’ that tests a nation’s soul. Any event, or any defining moment in a nation’s life that awakens it from its slumber, and that becomes its tipping point, a means of unraveling the naked truths about its true character; its true essence is called a Nation’s Crucible. The massacre of 145 people, including 132 school children at Peshawar hopefully can be construed as Pakistan’s Crucible. This scribe believes that Pakistan shall no more be the same; its politicians may like it or not. It would now emerge as a better and a stronger Pakistan. It is not just hoped; it is believed that no more its people shall allow the politicians to confuse them any further on the issue of who is a “good” Taliban and who is a “bad” Taliban? It will not be easy for the spineless leaders to wipe out the blood of these 132 school children even if the water of seven seas is made available to them. And if they try to do so, the army and the people would not let them to do so.
Professor J. Rufus Fears in his wonderful lectures titled “The Wisdom of History” raises a fundamental question, “Can we separate private morality from public morality?” George Washington, the Founding Father of America, and Quaid-i-Azam, the Founding Father of Pakistan, at least believed that one could not do so. Fears gives reasons: The Romans fell because citizens had become so corrupt that they were willing to become slaves of a despot. True, old Republicans of Rome could never have accepted Caesar’s dictatorship. Same formula applies to the people of Pakistan. As says Naseer ud Din Shah in “Khuda ki Liay- In The name of God” film, “Muslims are always in search of 'Halal' meat with 'Haram' money in their wallets”. Halal has to be 'Tayyab' too, says the Qur'an. In Islam there is no such thing as private morality and public morality.
Another question Fears asks is, “Can an immoral ruler be a good king?” In Modern times it is believed that private morality is a private matter; it has nothing to do with leadership qualities. But actually it does. Personal whims and desires do impact the quality of leadership. The Roman Empire went bankrupt by concentrating on the Middle East. It just wore down its army at the expense of its economy. In recent times, the USSR repeated the same mistake. The Founding Fathers of America faced a moral issue at the time of Independence: they could abolish slavery in the six States, or they could write the Constitution first. Slaves were major contributors to the fledging agro-economy of the country. They retained the curse of slavery, but wrote the Constitution. The Modern mind may look at the issue from a different angle, but they did what they deemed better then.
Plutarch notes Marc Antony could have been the master of the world, but instead of consolidating his powers, he stayed focused on a love affair with Cleopatra. The Turks in Constantine -Ople (and they admit it) overspent on the construction of mosques - the Blue Mosque, the Sulaimania Mosque, and the Palace on the Bosporus, and then almost went bankrupt. The last Sultan borrowed money from the West, and spent it on the construction of a palace just to impress the West. So the conclusion is: “Know your priorities, and set them in the right way”.
Knowing ones priorities is like knowing one’s gifts; knowing ones limits. This leads to using ones powers justly. Metros and mega projects or fixing the broken windows first, got Mian Nawaz Sharif in the hole that he is in. Bio-history shows that Napoleon lost to Duke Wellington at Waterloo, more due to his skin itching and hemorrhoids than due to his poor strategy. So it is very important for the People of Pakistan to know what medicines their leadership takes; and what kind of diet they consume. (Continued next week)
