First week of January, we start our new year by discovering the bodies of 15 Pakistani soldiers who had been kidnapped in December. According to the news reported by various newspapers, a spokes person of Taliban by the name of Ihsanullah Ihsan accepted the responsibility on the behalf of Taliban and described them as an “act of revenge” for the killing of militants in the Khyber tribal region on Sunday. He said the group would release a video of the killings “soon” and threatened more attacks.

Well considering the unimportance of this news (since we are much more interested in the memo gate), in the same week 10 more bodies have been found in the north-west border region.

Now just imagine, for a minute, that in the above news headlines, the word Taliban is replaced by NATO. Here is the reaction both from the media and the civil society: HOW DARE THEY TOUCH OUR JAWANS? THE WHOLE NATION IS AWAKENED! HUM EENT KA JAWAB PATHAR SAY DAIN GAI! And practically to show our outrage, we are going to change our display pictures on twitter because apparently that’s pretty much the end of our ghairat (yeah that will show those bloody Americans!).

The truth of the matter is that we are so confused. Whenever a Muslim kills a fellow Muslim, we always have reasons. They are not bad people, they are fighting occupation, it is a reaction to the loss of their families, but never for once would we create a similar uproar as that against the attacks of US military? Why is it so hard to call wrong, wrong despite the fact that whoever does it? Are the soldiers killed by Taliban not the sons of this mitti? Don’t their children will feel the absence of their father? Won’t their wives and mothers be grieved by the loss? WHY oh WHY do we not feel their pain?

Honestly I am one of those people who are one of the staunchest opponents of this bogus “war on terror.” It is a war that started without a proper strategy, had no idea of its goals, and apparently now the proponents of this war have realized that they have been fighting those for 10 years who are not even their enemy (Lovely!!!). However, the fact remains that US is a super-power and obviously it will always look to protect its interests in the region. While we can sit at our homes criticizing and blaming US for all its failed policies, stop for a minute and see who is actually suffering the most as a result.

Now I know that critics would say that they kill our soldiers because they are fighting the war on America’s behalf and America is an occupier. While I fully agree that US has no right to be in Afghanistan, since it has no strategy (like always) and never had any on how to win this war, and we made a big mistake by allying with US, it is also true that now this war on terror is Pakistan’s war, and the sooner we realize it the better. US won’t stay in this region forever, for them it is so easy to label people as enemy, friends, and terrorists as it suits them and will do whatever it takes to minimize its own loss and get out of the region. It is however, a great question of concern for Pakistanis because like always, they would be left to deal with the mess. Now, this is what Pakistani people really need to understand that your criticism of US should not make you an apologetic for the horrendous activities and ideologies of Taliban which are one of the biggest threats that our country is facing today.

The way we want to deal with this problem is going to determine our character as a nation. We can either apologize for those who are killing our people or for once, we can be on the right side of history and say ENOUGH!!!! Leave our country alone. Whatever is your ideology, your religion, or your grievances; you have no right to kill our people. Why do we seem to care or have sympathy for those who have no regard for lives of our fellow Pakistanis? Why should we be apologetic for the actions of those who don’t seem to give a damn about our country? The silence that this country shows over the acts of militants is appalling. Khuda kay liye, iss mulk kay liye BOL!!!

 

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