the killing of children is heinous (whether in pakistan, palestine, iraq or the US) but it’s important to understand context rather than invent comfortable narratives. no, this was not an attack on “education” or “girls” or the expression of some twisted islamic ideology. it was a v specific and brutal revenge attack on the pakistani army, where it is most vulnerable.
nothing excuses the act. however, talking about it in biblical terms (evil, eliminating people, cutting out cancer, etc) is equally disturbing to me, esp when all children killed are not met with the same scriptural outrage. as someone from pakistan, with family still there, i am not keen on the cycle of violence that the war on terror has escalated. i do not support drones, army operations inside of waziristan, extrajudicial killings, torture and ethnic cleansing. just because CNN (or other msm) do not report on those atrocities, it does not mean that they don’t happen.
this is a bit diff from US school shootings. this is more like the beslan siege carried out by chechen militants. i remember that v clearly. no where in the media was it mentioned what the russians had done in chechnya, how grozny had been razed to the ground and 80,000 people killed. unless we understand what violence does to people, we are destined to respond with more violence. that’s what many pakistanis are demanding – large scale revenge. i don’t believe that’s the road to conciliation and peace.
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Sami Yousafzai: The unprecedented slaughter Tuesday at least 132 students at a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, shows in the most gruesome possible way that the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, have not yet been defeated or brought under control by the Pakistani military’s recent offensives. Certainly that was the objective of the attack: The school is a private one run by the army for the children of soldiers. “The TTP is ready for a long, long war against the U.S. puppet state of Pakistan,” a TTP commander told me when I reached him on his Afghan cellphone. “We are just displaced, but we are still in positions to attack wherever we want,” said Jihad Yar Wazir. Yar Wazir justified the killings as fitting retribution. “The parents of the army school are army soldiers and they are behind the massive killing of our kids and indiscriminate bombing in North and South Waziristan,” which are the TTP strongholds. “To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.” But the children are innocents, I said. What about them, I asked? “To hurt them at their safe haven and homes—such an attack is perfect revenge.” What about our kids and children,” he said. “These are the kids of the U.S.-backed Pakistani army and they should stop their parents from bombing our families and children.” Yar Wazir went on: “Those kids are innocent because they are wearing a suit and tie and Western shirts? But our kids wearing Islamic shalwar kamiz do not come before the eyes of the media and the West.” More here.