Our country has turned into a killing field. Death comes everywhere, too easily and too frequently. The latest killing of Zahra Shahid Hussain, a founding member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, late Saturday night outside her home in Defence in Karachi may have been intended to deter voters from taking part in the re-polling for NA-250, held on Sunday May 19. Or the motives may have been different – there is no way of knowing for sure. But the end result is the same; another person is dead.
Before Zahra’s murder, social activist Parveen Rehman was shot dead also in Karachi in March. And in May another activist, Abdul Waheed, originally from Swat who had worked with Parveen Rehman on the Orangi Pilot Project was killed at his medical store as his one-year-old daughter watched. Waheed had been receiving threats after speaking out against Parveen Rehman’s killing.
Many other good people have been killed in Karachi. The city has become a killing field – but it is not the only one in the country. The Awami National Party lost scores of activists in 2013 alone. As the leader of the party, Asfandyar Wali, said after the ANP was decimated at the polls, that the election campaign for the party consisted of picking bodies off the streets after rallies, tending to the injured in hospitals and attending funerals of the dead.
Yes, the party also suffered defeat because of its inept governance, but the ruthless attacks on it, apparently by the Taliban, had a role to play. No political entity can survive systematic murder on this scale – and Wali, for all his own leadership failures, has a point when he says that Hakimullah Mehsud emerged as a key arbitrator in the polling process.
The killing field extends into the vast, rugged territory of Balochistan – assuming here perhaps the ugliest form of all. Bodies of persons who had gone ‘missing’ turn up regularly in the province, the faces sometimes spattered with acid to disguise their identity. Torture marks can be seen on many of these bodies. All – or almost all – have a single gun-shot wound in the head. Yet the issue remains ‘sidelined’, barely picked up by the mainstream media.
Journalists who have regularly taken it up have attracted wrath from the establishment. This was almost certainly one of the reasons New York Times Bureau Chief Declan Walsh, whose visa was suddenly withdrawn this month forcing him to leave the country a day or so after the polls, earned so much distrust of the authorities, who eventually ousted him. Perhaps he should consider himself fortunate to have been evicted..
Sadly there is no evidence either that the post-poll scenario in Balochistan will bring much change. In a fractured provincial assembly the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party headed by the highly respected Mahmood Khan Achakzai is contesting the PML-N’s right to form government and holding that with ten seats, it has the right to do so with backing from Baloch nationalist groups. The PML-N holds nine seats, but has independents ready to join it. The party’s candidate for chief minister, Sanaullah Zehri, is a contentious figure – and more divide in the most troubled of our provinces is not something to look ahead to.
We all know many different groups are behind the killings; we also know the killings – everywhere in the country – must be stopped if we are to re-claim any sense of civilisation; any sense of normalcy. The groups engaged in the murders in Karachi, in Balochistan, in KP and other places are all different in nature. The task of dealing with these diverse elements, which include those linked with the state, is not an easy one, but it has to be undertaken.
Killings of the kind we continue to see simply de-humanise us further and with each body that crumples after a shooting or blast, more hatred is injected into a society through which poison now runs through virtually every vein. The Shias have been victims too, with the Hazara community of Quetta a prime target in recent months.
We need to act to stop such massacres. They simply must not be tolerated. For this reason the words of Pervaiz Khattak, the man put forward by the PTI as its future chief minister for KP are disturbing. At his first press conference in Peshawar, Khattak stated his party had “no fight” with the Taliban.
The point is it should have a fight; we as citizens should all have an enmity with the Taliban. The outfit has ruthlessly killed thousands of citizens over the years, including women and small children whose blood-stained bodies have fallen in bazaars, in streets and in mosques. How can we then say we have nothing against those capable of mowing down innocent people in this manner?
We need to see them as enemies if we are to stop the killings and prevent further death across the expanding tract of territory that they command in our country, extending recently also into Karachi.
In the same context, the links between the PML-N – the ruling party for the next five years – and certain extremist forces is also alarming. Much has been written about these liaisons, with some of them again visible in the recent allotment of tickets and in arrangements made in various constituencies.
If the PML-N is to end the heinous crime of mass murder in the country, it will need to detach itself from these forces and demonstrate that for the sake of the country as a whole it is strong enough to abandon past loyalties and distinguish right from wrong. We must hope it, and also other parties which will be a part of the governments in various places, demonstrate the courage to take this step.
The problems of Karachi, those related to the Taliban, those that exist in Balochistan and the hate-killings targeting Shias all need to be dealt with. A country where death has become such a regular event cannot really hope to live.
We must find ways of resuscitating it by ending the cycle of killing and taking measures against all the groups responsible for such acts of violence. This has become our most pressing need.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

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