**Swat is on the move, and it will soon reach your home, your city. **
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(Translated from an Urdu essay by Mohammad Hanif of bbcurdu.com)
Note: it is translation and not a “transliteration”. Minor changes have been made to capture the essence of the original essay. Forgive me if something got amiss.
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If your daughter is of school going age, you must have sent her to school this morning. Your daughter is in school regardless of the fact that you are an honest man, or you live on bribes. It doesn’t matter if you voted for Mullah party, or you voted for a woman.
It won’t matter either if your daughter will go to a government school and spend the day sitting on the floor, or she will go to an air-conditioned and well equipped private school.
In either case, you as a parent must have sent her to school. It is possible that she went to school on a bicycle, or bus, or your driver took her to school, or you drove her there. Your daughter may be sitting in a school sans roof, she may be getting some angry speech from a teacher, or she may be yawning.
Thus she is now in school studying unless she was sick or feigned sickness. And what did you do after sending her to school? May be you had a lavish breakfast, may be you opened your shop, or reached your big name office, or you may be pushing your cart full of snacks to some famous square.
After sending her to school, you may have scanned the newspaper, or saw the little ticker moving on the TV news screen, and then you may have seen the news flash about the little girls in Swat. May be you would sighed with sorrow to see how those girl schools are being blown to smithereens by the Islamists.
Then you may have gotten busy with your day while saying “Thank God we don’t live in Swat”. May be you imagine that the same Talib atrocities cannot occur in my village, my town, or my city.
You must have deluded yourself by saying that Talibs are not the true representatives of Islam. Our religion does not approve these heinous acts. And you wonder why such a simple issue cannot be solved by our politicians or our government.
It is a fact proven by a poll conducted back in 1988, then people listed their need in the following order:
- Reliable and ample supply of clean and sweat drinking water
- Girls schools.
Amazing! Isn’t it? That the number 2 priority was girls schools, and the desire was especially strong in the areas we call under developed.
Mind you, that we as a nation went through Zia-ul-haq’s black laws that tried to imprison the women behind the 4 walls of their homes. And still Pakistanis were resilient enough that more and more girls went to school and both government and private schools were filled with eager girls ready to learn, ready to push away the dark clouds of ignorance.
And the reason was simple! Even those who are from the worst and downtrodden areas realize that their future generations have to get to school if they want any chance at a better life.
I must relate a similar story to prove that the polls were valid even in Khyber agency. Even their elders wanted to get their girls educated. The story is from one of our well know film producer actor Sabiha Smar. In one of her movie “The dinner with President” there is a scene. It starts with a discussion between Sabiha and some elders of Khyber agency. The topic of the dialogue is “women rights”. When the tribal elders respond that our traditions do not allow women rights, she gets upset and starts to leave. Then an old man sitting in the back says, we really want our daughter to be able to read and write like you Ms. Sabiha!.
Having said that, we look at our state of affairs these days. And our reaction to the Taliban atrocities is horribly apathetic.
When Taliban banned education in Afghanistan, we said it is not our problem.
Later when the same Talib disease got to Wazirastan and destroyed schools, we cursed Americans.
Afterwards when Swat schools were bombed, we cursed our army.
And now when Talibans have totally banned Girls education, we blame this on Asif Zardari.
Strange isn’t it. Why are we going out of our ways to justify Talian’s uncouth behavior?
Then we have some self-proclaimed intellectuals are urging the government to go ahead and implement Sharia. And then Taliban will quit bombing the schools.
The question is that Taliban are cutting limbs, and decapitating their opponents in order to implement Islam, then how in the world Asif Zardari in his meandering wavering schemes will ever be able to implement better Islam than these Talibs.
Even if the whole country stops listening to the music, quits laughing at jokes, and starts pulling their shalwars above the ankles, there still is no guarantee that Taliban will not explode another bomb in the name of Islam.
OK, back to our topic “the bombing of girls schools”.
Now that you are done reading this essay, you may agree with it or you may disagree. Later in the day your daughter’s school day will be over, then she will be home. You probably will ask her about her day in school. You may get a brief flashback about Swat and thank heavens that you don’t live in that hellhole.
But this apathy, this myopic attitude won’t help. Just look at our country’s map. Few years ago Swat too was not the same as today’s.
This plague started from Afghanistan, then it reached Wazirastan, and it is now ready to fully engulf Swat. This plague is like a pulsating, and recoiling black snake. It is on the move, and it is about to reach your city.