Pakistan’s Crucible: The Peshawar School Massacre - Part II
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

 “A smooth sea never develops a skillful sailor.” - Ancient proverb 
The real tragedy of a nation is when it loses its sense of priorities and its sense of honor and conscience. Rob Roy, a 1995 movie, shows a dialogue that takes place between a son and a father. The son asks the father as to what is honor. The father tells his son, “All men with honor are kings - but not all kings have honor… honor is what no man can give you, and none can take away. Honor is a man’s gift to himself… honor grows in you and speaks to you. All you need to do is: Listen.”
Arthur Miller in “The Crucible”, through his main character, Proctor, equates honor with a person’s name. (Our ancestors in the Indian subcontinent honored this name-legacy to a great extent. Oral transactions were always honored).   A person’s name is his legacy to his children. A defiled name of a father is a perennial curse for his children. At least it used to be so once. The priest in the play wants Proctor to sign his confession as he intends to nail it on the church door. Proctor objects by saying, “I am John Proctor! You will not use me!...  I have three children - how may I teach them to walk like  men in the world, and I sold my friends? I blacken all of them when this is nailed to the church… this is my name! I cannot have another in my life!” Now our politicians tell lies, and thanks to the TV camera, when their lies are replayed as a reminder to them, they are heard saying, “I did not say this. I did not mean  it. It is not me”.  Bank loan defaulters  when shown the bank papers on TV  Just keep on saying, “It  is wrong. It is politically motivated. This loan was adjusted”.
So, ours is not a case of  simple “Broken  Windows”.  The whole country is broken and needs immediate  fixing.  This term  of  Broken Windows comes from the metaphor that was used to describe the concept, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge.” This theory of Professor James Q. Wilson and Professor George Kelling was picked up and applied by a former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to rid the  city of its criminals. He ordered that all the graffiti be washed nightly from subway cars; all subway turnstile jumpers who travel without tickets be arrested; all trash be picked up, all broken windows be fixed immediately. The crime rate in New York fell dramatically. The Missoula Police Department make the Broken Window theory an integral part of their law enforcement strategy.
Poet Jafer Tahir once said a similar thing in his beautiful verse, “Meri Ghar ki Faseel kia tooti: Logo na usay rah guzar bana lia-The fence of my house got broken, and people soon made it a thoroughfare”.
I agree with Ayaz Amir when he says in his column of January 2, 2015, “So what exactly was anyone expecting? That these knights would suddenly turn into blazing Tarzans, leaping from tree to tree, performing feats of valor that would leave us awe-struck?...a steady chorus in the punditocracy is rising, bewailing the government’s endless sitting - and standing”. Some wise commentators on Imran Khan’s change of heart still believe that it was his large-heartedness and his sheer show of grace that he opted to cooperate with the government in the wake of the Peshawar School tragedy. He did the right thing, though he had no other choice. The point is that now they all should honor the 21st Amendment that allowed the formation of military courts in the same spirit that they honored the 18th Amendment that brought to their Provinces immense amount of money. Nations take extraordinary and even very unpleasant steps in order to protect their countries.
Pakistan as a nation is living under tremendous amount of self-induced and self-created stress. People carry mines of stress in them; domestic fights; kidnappings; insecurity; health issues; lack of livelihood; shortages of power/gas; helplessness; heart troubles; migraine, arthritis etc. all are coming from the failure of the government to be effective and functional. If there are dumps of dirt and filth; if there is litter on the roads and in the streets; if the cars are dirty and the lawns if any are over-weeded;  if there is lack of happiness in life; if people have become lean and mean and heedless;  if the society as a whole is awash with the culture of acquisition, and not with the culture of sharing; if the youth is hooked up to watching pornography; if the immune system has become so weak that the allergies, infections and diseases like cancer thrive on peoples' bodies; it is all coming from stress. I hold the leadership of Pakistan solely responsible for all these inflictions. The politicians are inflicting “the inflicted” in the most cruel fashion.
Is the case of Pakistan beyond repair, beyond fixing? Certainly not. Most of these problems are man-made. There is a law called the principle of 80/20. Some 20 percent people  own 80 percent wealth; only 20 percent do the work of 80 percent people; 20 percent criminals make hell of the life of 80 percent good people; in business only 20% percent customers bring the 80 percent profits; 20 percent of people  use  80 percent of the same shoes and clothes/utensils/rooms  and items of furniture at home. In short, 80 percent of good results come  from 20 percent people, and in reverse, 80 percent corruption also comes from 20 percent people. So the need is to just fix those 20 percent bad people, the rest would all fall in line automatically.
Pakistan is a simple case of unattended behavior of leaders that has led to the breakdown of the community as a whole. Pakistan had been for long like an abandoned piece of property. Weeds grew, windows got smashed; rowdy children and  minor shoplifters and pick-pockets  got emboldened and became bank robbers, child kidnappers and rapists; good families moved out; uncommitted people moved in; fights ensued; problems of drinking, gambling, womanizing multiplied; parks and playgrounds disappeared; beggars increased; serious crimes flourished. As a result, most people developed the mentality, “Don’t get involved.”. And all this happened not  overnight; it happened in decades. Initially, the leaders began ignoring such small matters as the case of Broken Windows, or litter on the streets, and then they stopped discerning major matters like those of terrorism. Now the situation is that the whole nation appears to be spinning out of control.
When the minister responsible for maintaining law and order in the country, Ch. Nisar, acts like a coroner, whose  sole  job is to determine the causes of death, and then report, “How the patient died?” how can he with such a strategy, diagnose clinically as to what the patient needs to get cured. It is just pathetic to watch this man going into sickening details, describing in mono tone, how the judge got shot by his own guard in a court in Islamabad; how the terrorists entered, and where they disappeared!
The country needs a major reshuffle, and Mian Nawaz Sharif has neither the potential, nor the competence to do that. He could not fire those who had day and night counted the virtues of “Talks”. The country lost close to five hundred people in those four months leading finally to the Peshawar massacre of innocent children. Currently the country is in the grip of petrol shortage. Is there a solution? Yes! Do what President Abraham Lincoln had to do, though he was opposed by the Congress and the Supreme  Court: he suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War in 1863, explaining to the Congress, “We have a case of rebellion, and the public safety does require” suspension of the writ. While Lincoln talked and acted; Congress talked without acting. Same  is the case with the parliament of Pakistan.
Through its inaction and inefficiency, failing to pass any tangible laws benefiting the people and ensuring their security; it rendered itself redundant, rather it replaced itself through its four sessions of All Parties Conference. The  country’s courts also failed to deliver. They should now improve themselves and must swallow this bitter pill of military courts, by helping them to function justly during the period of the next two years. Cleaning the house, mending its leaking roof, and four walls, fixing its windows and doors must precede before the  job of any renovation can take place.