CPTnet
13 June 2009
PAKISTAN BLOG: Terror

by Gene Stoltzfus

[Note: The following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been edited for length and clarity.  People wishing to see the original piece will find it at http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/terror/]


I began planning this trip to Pakistan six months ago.  Now I wish I had found a way to come before the new wave of violence swept over the entire country and I was unable to travel to Peshawar.  Although the news of only major bombings reaches the vast lowland Punjabi plains or the international world, other incidents occur every day, including roadside bombings, a tactic developed and refined in Iraq.  Reports of beheadings, beatings, and other inquisition-like moments of horror encroach upon people every day here.

This past week, we twice debated traveling to Peshawar then decided against doing so.  On one day, the car in which I may have travelled to Peshawar passed an exploded roadside bomb just as rescuers were pulling surviving victims from the debris and taking them to Peshawar hospitals.  At 10:30 on 9 June, seventeen people died when a 500-pound truck bomb exploded at the five star hotel in Peshawar, the Pearl Continental.

Like their brothers and sisters in Afghanistan and the border area living under Cobra helicopter attacks, drone missiles and ground attacks, people in Pakistan ask, “Who would do such a thing as this?”  By the time the stories of death reach the cities further from the Northwest, often transmitted by word of mouth, they are embellished with every conceivable explanation of conspiracy and betrayal which includes Indian, CIA, Israeli, Chinese or some other foreign power’s intent to manipulate Pakistan.

Terror is real for people here living under the most modern of warfare—hellfire missiles shot from a safe place in the sky by way of unmanned drones directed from computer panels thousands of miles away.  The Taliban responds to these missiles with truck, car, and roadside explosive devices.  After the attacks, whether from foreign-designed missiles or locally-designed car bombs, people here bury the dead, mourn, and internalize the trauma from wherever the violence comes.  

Tactical experts on both sides, Taliban and advanced militaries, believe that their weapons advance a just cause.  Neither will willingly submit to international standards of a just war that puts limits on them.  Both seek revenge—the U.S. for 9/11, the Taliban for foreign violations of their homeland.

A few days ago, we met a distinguished Pakistani leader whose lifetime spans all the way back to before the pre-partition struggle with the British that ended in 1947.  We briefly introduced ourselves as nonviolent workers and received no immediate response—only silence for what seemed like an age.  And then he spoke, “You can not help it. You must do what you are doing.”  His words pointed towards our common calling.  That sacred moment of blessing could not be interrupted with words.  We sat in silence and we contemplated our commitments to live a life of overcoming violence.