It has been two days since the Peshawar Tragedy and now i am writing what my inner self has been wanting to say. The Peshawar Children massacre was as disgusting as something i have seen in my entire life, and i hope that i never see anything worse than this. There was multiple times when i had to close my browser abruptly because i could no longer bear it any more. Such was the pain. Yes it does hurt, when it hits you close to home. All the time this thought of “How, Why, How Come,” has been going through my mind all along. I think now i have some part of the puzzle solved that i would like other people to realize, and hopefully our collective effort can prevent such thing in future. Lets’ step back and notice few events in the past. Dozens of children in Pakistan died due to Famine in last couple of months. There were also multiple stories of Children dying due to lack of facilities in Hospitals. There were large number abducted teenage girls found in Karachi for human trafficking (someone would argue that is worse than death). And then this barbaric incident of innocent children being killed in Peshawar. Is any of these deaths any less painful for the parents? Is any of these lives less important? This kind of situation has been in the making for a long period of time (i would say probably last 40 years or so). Our generation and our fathers/mothers are equally to blame for this. Because collectively, we have eaten away at our institutions with corruption, nepotism and negligence for so long that now they cannot even prevent our children from such atrocities. A half decent social service institution would have prevented children dying of hunger. A decent healthcare facility would have prevented the infants dying from lack of oxygen. A decent customs/police/immigration control would have deterred those human traffickers. A decent intelligence/police department might have preempted the Peshawar tragedy. Of course not every tragedy can be prevented, but at least the chances and magnitude of such things can be dramatically reduced if the institutions/individuals were doing there job somewhat decently. Instead they are busy in two things: serving the ruling elite/higher ups or extorting money from people below. Nowadays i can tell you with 99% confidence that i can almost do anything illegal in Pakistan and get away with it, as long as i have the right amount of money or connections. People have no longer the fear of consequences and no one realizes that there is that minimum level of “Respect for the Law” that must exist in every society for it to continue functioning. I feel like Pakistani citizens have lost it. No one cares about the consequence of their illegal activity and no one in these institutions say “This is not right, and i cannot let that happen”. Reminds me of a scene in movie Tombstone when the killing of innocents got out of hand, and one of the corrupt sheriff stands up to his superiors and says “Sir, we gotta have some law around here” (or something to that effect). For people who still have not understood what i am trying to say. Picture the following scenario. There is a metal fence around village which is preventing the monster from attacking.The village assigns guards to protect the fence. As time passes by, people start coming to the guards and pay them small bribes and steal one of metal bars and say “Cmon, its just one metal bar. No one is going to notice” and at the same time the Guards are also getting rich and fat, and no longer able to perform their duty. Well over time, there is no fence left (or very little of it) and then every night the monsters attack the village and kill innocent women and children. Now every time this happens people curse and blame the monster and vows to kill it. But what they don’t realize is that a monster will always be a monster, and there always will be one more monster to kill. Strategically they them self are to blame for eroding their protecting fence over this long period of time. Such is the state of people of Pakistan. Overtime, rather than strengthening the very fence that was meant to protect them (state institutions), they have made them so weak that now that it is very easy for any monster (tragedy) to come and visit them. So please next time when you chip away at the fence or let some when chip away, think twice. As charity starts from home. So next time, when you are in a position that you have to bribe someone to get something done Or when you are being asked to take bribe to let something slide.... think again and see if you have the moral courage to say no. I ask that you please share this and hopefully even if 1% of people understand what is being said here, it might save 1 additional child from dying. -Talib
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 08:17:00 +0000
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