This was spooky indeed.

And your maniacal laugh reminds me of The Joker.

Well said, enough is enough.

Peace.

Mahwash,
Indeed. And yes, we’ll soon turn into Jokers if there’s no end to it.

No One,
Thanks. *sighs*

i dont even know whether we can really do something. i feel so helpless

Prayers for the ones who lost their lives and prayers for their families.

And we thought we’ve seen it all… this is getting insane.

I am out of rants.

May Allah save us all from the arbab-e-ikhtyar of our country.

And may He give us all the sabr, resilience and courage to fight these dark times. Ameen.

* STAND BY YOU* May ALLAH give us all the strength and courage to bear the pain and to stand up against all the madness. This should stop now, everyone of us continues to bleed with every single bombing that takes place in this country of ours, there is a limit to what we can take and I guess this all is going over board now.

Agreeing with you all the way, man. All the way. Its time to make a stand for ourselves because the so-called-leaders will not do it for us.

nice thoughts…

so how do we start?

I don’t know. We’ve been standing up against suicide bombings for a long time now. Against militancy, extremism, hatred incitement…but does it matter what 98% of the population thinks when a scant 2 or less than 2% has the artillery, and explosives and isn’t afraid to use it?

You can’t fight violence with peace or ‘sharafat’. Even Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement involved incitement to tear up railway lines, and Indian cooks to poison their goray employers (though for some reason nobody really remembers that).

Uff, meray Khuda, you would think I want to start a bloody war here, but all i really want to say is that there isn’t much we can do. Stand up and do what? Say what? I’ll stand for the rest of my life but none of these people (militants, fundamentalists, terrorists, what do i call them?) will care. They might just blow me up next. And all the peaceful citizens of this country will mourn my death for a week (or trash Karachi) and wait for the next explosion.

*lost* Don’t know what to say.

Karachiwali,
You are not alone. Helplessness is all we feel right now.

Hina,
I believe this has gone beyond insane. Who knows what else we still have to see.

Bhaijan,
Ameen to your duas.

Sana,
Oh, this had gone overboard a long time ago. We were just sitting there, watching everything happen, which, frankly, is the only thing we have been doing.

Specs,
Yes, it’s time. It’s time to make a stand. The only problem is how.

Awahid,
Thank you.

Hira,
Sadly, you are right.

I am as clueless as you are as to what to do after standing up. And I agree, all this madness can’t be fought with sharafat; most of the time, war is inevitable for bringing peace. In this case, however, we don’t know how to fight, or who to fight. Both sides just keep on missing their targets and it’s us — the “peaceful” citizens — who are paying the price. All we are left to do is to express our frustration here on our blogs or on a message board or wherever.

I do believe, however, that if the 98% of the population stands together (doing even nothing) against the 2% that is creating all this havoc, then that 2% will pause. However slightly, they will pause. They might restart (and to be bluntly honest, they will restart), but at least they’ll know. Right now, they are just taking advantage of the mass confusion we find ourselves in.

*sighs* But I guess it’s a blessing that if nothing, we can still rant.

Ordinary Girl,
Me neither, OG. Me neither. As I said, we can only rant.

Saadat, I hate to say this but I vehemently agree with Hira. Our angry chants and rants can only provide just another potential bombing spot for terrorists. This country, like every other, is powered by a power elite, none of which contain the masses as their superior decision makers. Masses are never decision makers, they are never the agents of change, they can never bring about any sort of significant alterations in the pages of history. The revolutions and major dividing events of the past are not the key achievements of masses, they are the results of the manipulations of interest groups, propaganda and leadership-values, most of which are beyond the understand and grasp of masses. Sociologically and psychologically speaking, masses are the worst of the lot, the scum of the universe, literally.

That is what is scariest in this entire picture. Masses are dying yet masses are helpless. So helpless that they cannot even defend themselves in the face of a faceless enemy, in a plight that kills their loved ones, in a war against agendas of people who are far out of reach and way too strong to be countered.

It is a tragedy, from Jinnah to Zardari (I hate to utter both names in the same sentence), that Pakistan has struggled against. The top-officials have no interest in understanding or alleviating the problems. We, the people, (and I hate to sound so terribly nihilistic) are but pawns of a design that we have no hand in. We will suffer, we will die, and we will not be able to do anything about it.

Yes, anything at all.

Mahwash,
I agree with Hira, and I agree with you as well. I acknowledged that our standing up will do nothing except make the power elite shrug their shoulders in that slight pause and then carry on with their agendas. But the problem is, sooner or later, the masses will get out of control, and that would again do nothing except creating hell for the masses to die in…

As a famous old song said, izhar bhi mushkil hai, chup reh bhi nahin saktay.

lets make somethings clear. everyone on this message board does NOT belong to the masses. its one of our basic basic delusions. according to just about anyone, if your family earns more than 25000 rupees a month, you shoot up to the top 5% in Pakistan.

therefore, WE are the elite we love to hate. you, me, and everyone who’s posted before me.

and since most of the comments claim that it is the elites which run this country, it follows that WE run this country. many of us will throw up our hands now and say that we don’t exercise any real power to stop these bombings.

true, we can not directly stop it. but we can bring an end to the feelings of injustice, and deprivation that are so prevalent across our country. we can consume less, complain less, and share more.

of course that is laughably easy to say. but let’s not get nihilistic. we are the problem we seek to solve, and in a way that’s a good thing, because we know what to do.

KarachiKhatmal (you’ve chosen an odd nickname, has anyone told you that?),

Might I explain the theory of the “Power Elite” by sociologist C. Wright Mills? I suggest you look it up. Masses are at the bottom of the barrel. And the ones on top are military head honchos, policy-makers and the opinion-leaders. People like you me, regardless of our income (mostly, anyway) rank on the bottom, a place where even hearing aids would have trouble doing their duty.

“We can bring an end to the feelings of injustice and deprivation so prevalent across our country”

That was spoken like a true idealist, a true elitist. What does your dad do?

You think that by writing on a blog that someone literate enough to write a blog has hosted on an internet site, written in the language of the elite, can stop women from prostitution, children from being sold and Zardari from becoming President?

Blogging and voicing of opinions is an incredibly important tool for change, and I’m all for it. But problems like poverty and illiteracy don’t go away by talking about it amongst ourselves (sad but true), and they will certainly not be alleviated by all of us wishing that they do.. no matter how really really really really hard we close our eyes. Sorry, that just isn’t happening.

If you want to stop sounding nihilist talk about the future of Pakistan and how it can be better, and what changes should be there. But don’t sit there and glorify poverty and expect things to change just because people with 25k-plus income can TALK about it.

Saadat,

That’s the inevitable end I’m fearing. No matter how badly KarachiKhatmal wants it to be untrue, it really is where we’re heading.

Uptil yesterday i had thought that one of the major reasons that Pakistan was suffering from suicide bombings and such, was because it is one of America’s keenest allies against the war on terrorism. We provided air bases for the bombing of Afghanistan, and we continue to support American policy.
I felt it was another case of the chickens coming home to roost.

Then i learnt that Kuwait had provided the US the airbases to bomb Iraq. I also learned that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was just as willing. For some reason uptil yesterday i had hoped it had been Israel- i don’t know why.
I then also realised that other than Iran, almost all front-line Muslim states are pro American policies.If not pro-policies, at least they won’t tick off the US by refusing them anything.

So now i’m left with just one question. Why is Pakistan the primary target of the fundamentalists, other than the US and EU? Why isn’t the same happening in other countries?

Karachikhatmal,
I agree with you partially that we are the problem we seek to solve, but I also think that the economic elite are not always the power elite; power elite include the economic elite, but the reverse might not be true.

Mahwash,
I’ll be checking out that theory. And yes, that horrible end is where we are heading, unless we put an end to it. Again, the problem is how.

Hira,
I wish I knew. Probably it has something to do with the emotions — the jazbatiyat — that runs in our Pakistani blood and makes us shoot our both feet at once.

@Hira

Prolly cause them folks with the bombs are closest to us! :S

@Saadat

baraa bad scene hai!

We have said it all, heard it all, thought it all, and yet nothing seems to change for the better.

We all know we must do something, that the time is now for action, that the masses must take control (as anarchist as that sounds), but no one seems to know just what it is that needs doing.

Perhaps, each of us needs to sit down and set down just what it is that each of us can do in our own capacity, which come to think of it is as vague as everything else. I can sit and hope and a fat lot of good that will do.

I know what is wrong. Bombing our own people is wrong. Gunships firing away into our own people is wrong. The people killed in the bomb blasts were mostly if not all Pakistanis and Muslims. The people our army is having to kill are also all Muslims and mostly Pakistanis. Muslims and Pakistanis dying at the hands of Muslims and Pakistanis is wrong. Muslims and Pakistanis dying is wrong. People dying is wrong. And all this death hoisted upon us by an amalgamation of multiple foreign agenda.

First and foremost, this death, this killing must stop. And we need to figure out how to do that. How can each of us in his or her own capacity help stop this senseless killing of our people on both sides of this conflict?

Naive I may sound, but the start must be for Pakistan to pull out of this disastrous war with immediate effect. Tell the Americans and the NATO off. What can they do to us that we are constantly being threatened with? What really have they been able to do to Iran, or even North Korea for that matter? And they do not even need either of those two, nor is any of them a nuclear power. What on earth are we so afraid of? The last thing a crumbling wall street’s America can risk is expanding any of its wars.

Stand up to them and tell them off – it is all very well being allies for mutual benefit, but when one of the allies is bleeding to death because of the alliance, the other allies are called parasites. Pakistan has fought this forbidden war at a prohibitive cost. And she has fought this war with herself. I fail to understand this suicidal alliance and the benefit to be had from killing ourselves.

The Government of Pakistan must sit down with all Pakistanis, those who have been bombed by the army, and those who have been bombed in retaliation, admit the glaring horrendous blunders, and apologise. I do not care if it is Zardari, or Gilani, or Shareef or Kyani who does this – but peace must be made internally, before we indulge in the luxury of external wars.

That will be the first step on the long journey towards peace and healing our own wounds.

My heart bleeds for the victims of these suicide bomb blasts in our cities, and it bleeds just the same for the Pakistanis killed and wronged in the North of the country. Make no mistake, they are all Pakistanis and they are being killed.

The Government of Pakistan must be reminded that at the height of insurgency in occupied Kashmir, our enemy across the border has not resorted to gunship sorties on Kashmiris. How on earth can anyone even begin to justify our operations in the North???

Farooq,
Aisa waisa bad scene.

Bhaijan,
Thank you for your insightful words, as always. Yes, that’s what our government should be doing, but the problem again is that the arbab-e-ikhtyar don’t give a damn. They are more busy wishing they could hug ‘gorgeous’ ladies. *sighs*

Its a pity it was pallin and not rice. But then one can’t expect Zardari to be embarrassed about anything. At least Shaukat Aziz knew when he was snubbed.

I am wondering if this is how he had wooed Benazir.

More importantly, is this the kind of diplomacy we will be seeing now?

SIGH indeed!

Saadat,

It is quite frustrating to know that despite having a relatively stable governance right across the border from you, my country has pretty much the same problems as yours (well technically I am not right now, across the border from you.. but I was at one point of time).

someone here commented about the futility of writing articles in a foreign tongue that only a small minority can understand and identify with. I do not completely agree.. I think activism is a necessary tool against short-sighted, self-serving politics and it can manifest itself in lots of ways. People like us (I dare make a sweeping generalisation), who think alike, and have similar hopes and dreams of peace for our countries and families, also need reassurance that we are not alone. That there are more like us out there, and no matter how bad the situation might be, there is hope.

So yes, blogs and articles, however small their target audience might be, do make a difference. And I look forward to more like this from you!

cheers

manu

Manu,
Thank you for visiting and leaving such a nice comment. Everybody here maintains that blogs and articles are important for voicing our opinions and key components for change. It’s just that when it comes to taking practical steps, we find ourselves bound by constraints and unable to do anything. Perhaps, the change will start when we learn how to get around those constraints.