On the Feb. 16, the latest attack in a series took place in Sehwan, Sindh, at the shrine of Lal Shehbaz Qalandar, a Sufi saint. This happened on a Thursday, a day which holds great spiritual significance and is a busy day for most shrines. Over 75 people were killed, and a rough estimate of 150 were injured. A place of worship and spiritual cleansing for many was decimated and families were shattered beyond repair by the ruthlessness of a faction of extremists. The ISIL has claimed responsibility for this attack. Earlier that day, an explosive device targeted an army convoy in Balochistan, killing three soldiers.
A recent spate of attacks in Pakistan has diminished the optimism many held that as a country we were on the road to progress. In the past week, practically every major city of Pakistan has been targeted. It began in Lahore on the 13th of February, where a suicide bomber killed 13 and injured 85 at a protest outside the Punjab Assembly. It was carried out by the Jamat-ul-Ahrar, a faction of the Taliban in Pakistan, and was specifically targeting police forces.
Only a day after the attack in Lahore, two were killed while trying to diffuse a bomb in Quetta. On the 15th, another suicide bomber killed 8 in Mohmand, a part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. That very day a suicide bomber tried to attack a vehicle carrying judges in the city of Peshawar, killing the driver and injuring the vehicle’s four other occupants. Both of these attacks were claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.
We tell ourselves that we are a resilient nation that always rises from the ashes but what good is resilience? I would rather have the lives that have been lost returned to us than be resilient. I would rather be safe than resilient. Little children should not have to carry the weight of knowing that their parents could have died just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Generations of Pakistanis have grown up like this, scarred by the brutality of terror and the inability of past and current governments to solve a problem they created.
For Pakistan, the usual condemnations of terror and rhetoric about how we must take “swift action” against terrorism are not enough. We have spent too many years only taking half-hearted action against this menace. We no longer have the privilege to underestimate the hold that terrorist groups have on our country and how it may become even stronger if we neglect the issue at hand. Terrorism has never been about religion, but always about intimidating us into silence, making us too scared to step out of our homes. The need for defiance is stronger now than ever.
