Everybody is mourning over the Peshawar brutality at Army Public School. Mourners are not only the people in Pakistan who lost their children, but are also the ones from all over the world who apparently have no relation with the martyrs, yet are expressing solidarity with them. Of course, losing over 132 school-going children is one of the worst tragedies in today`s world, so resulted grief stands to a reason.

    Whatever happened in Peshawar was not the first time people of Pakistan had to face from TTP. In fact, they have been receiving dead bodies of their loved ones for more than a decade in the same way. However, instead of having a unanimous voice against the miscreants, there has been a clear division over whether Taliban are terrorists, or are our “Strategic Assets”.

     Whenever Taliban conducted attacks in the country killing dozens of common people, there were some specific analysts, former army-men, religious and political parties which always tried to defend the culprits by terming the attacks as a retaliation of the US drone attacks in tribal areas. Questions is, when TTP terrorists can kill thousands of innocent people in the name of revenge of their killed gangsters, then are more than 60,000 Pakistanis so helpless that no one has yet come up to take their revenge from Taliban monsters?

     Unfortunately, there are very few personalities and political parties in the country which have the courage to openly speak against Taliban`s viciousness. Of these, definitely MQM is on the top. In contrast to it, there is a long list of the people and parties which directly or indirectly defend the religious extremists. These are the elements which have been posing obstacles in the way of taking stern action against TTP.

“He was a martyr as he sacrificed his life for a great cause”

“Even if a dog is killed by America, I would call him a martyr”

“It was an attack on our on-going negotiations for peace in the country”

“How can we continue negotiations when there is a dead body lying in our court yard?”

     These were not the reactionary statements over the brutal killings of thousands of innocent Pakistanis, but for TTP`s (Ameer) head Hakeem Ullah Mehsud who got killed in a US drone attack. This clearly exposes how much pain our political and religious leaders have for TTP people. Question is, did we ever witness similar painful feelings from the same leaders after any TTP`s butchery killing dozens of harmless Pakistanis? Not at all! Still they are condemning the Peshawar massacre without naming the evil Taliban like “Whoever did that” or “Whoever is behind the attack”.

     We know that our religious parties have been inciting the Pakistani Muslims to go at Jehad in other parts of the world saying, “Is there no Muhammad Bin Qasim in the country to help the oppressed Muslims?” But, for more than 60,000 Pakistanis killed by Taliban inhuman, the same leaders kept giving sleeping pills to the nation saying, “Taliban are our own Muslim brothers” and ” The on-going terrorism in Pakistan is the result of US drone attacks in Waziristan.” Considering all these, can we expect any bold and genuine actions from these elements to root out the extremist groups from the country?

     To tell the truth, receiving nearing 150 dead bodies of our angel-like kids is a tragedy, but the real tragedy of the people is that some sections of their political and military ruling elites still reluctant to consider the culprits as the nation`s enemies. This is the reason why we have completely failed to root out Taliban groups from the country despite having launched so many operations.

     Therefore, we should not expect from the TTP`s apologists anyone to help us against Taliban. We, ourselves, will have to stand up against the religious extremists and their supporters. Now we will have to draw a clear line between us and the ones who politically and religiously defend Taliban so as to identify the black sheep in the country. Altaf Hussain`s MQM has already taken the initiation in this respect. The rest have to follow the same. This is the only way out for us to eradicate the extremists from our homeland. However, if we do not get united at this point of time, then we should be mentally prepared to see more massacres in the days to come. (May God save us from such a time ….. Aameen)