“IS it children we are killing now? My God, what are we? Savages?”

Can any lines be more apt to the slaughter of over 130 innocents in a school at Peshawar than these? They were written not today by a Pakistani but more than 150 years ago by a Frenchman — Victor Hugo.

They were written not simply to remonstrate against the death of a seven-year-old boy who was shot in the head as he played in a Paris street. They were written because they expressed “thoughts that lie too deep for tears”. They were written to articulate the anguish every adult — of any age, in every age, in every community, in every country — feels at having to “stitch shut the shrouds of seven-year-olds”.

Grief like death itself is unique. It cannot be shared. But to the extent that a 180 million people can carry part of the burden being endured by over 130 sets of mourning parents, they do so with feeling and with sincerity. The nation condoles with them — and with itself, for the murder of these innocent juveniles is also in part the demise of Pakistan’s future.

To say that the horror at the Army Public School at Peshawar has seeped like moist blood into the home of every Pakistani household may seem like hyperbole, yet chilling was the heart-searing coverage of the tragedy at Peshawar by the television channels. It will be difficult for anyone to erase from their minds the images they transmitted of distraught mothers, running between the Safa of one police barrier to the Marwah of another, in a desperate attempt to slake their thirst for information about their children.

They have now shot and killed more than 130 Malalas.

It will be impossible not to feel a deepening revulsion at this latest act of violence, wrought callously, deliberately, and wantonly by the Taliban. They shot one Malala Yousafzai in the head. She survived and received the Nobel Peace Prize. They have now shot and killed more than 130 Malala Yousafzais. There is no tribute precious enough, not even her golden Nobel Peace Prize medal, to honour their martyrdom.

An analysis here of why the Taliban upped the ante by attacking a school run by the Pakistan Army for the children of its soldiers would be as futile as trying to unravel the motives behind the recent suicide attack at Wagah border or the assault some years ago on the mosque close to GHQ.

Terrorists whether the Taliban or the Irish IRA or the Kenyan Mau Mau or the Greek EOKA have always relied upon the element of surprise. It is their unpredictable tit for the predictable tat by the state’s forces.

The confrontation between the Taliban and the Pakistan Army is no different. Military strategists would know better than us civilians that conventional responses are not the answer to unconventional provocations. They should know better than us civilians, for they have always had first bite at our national budget.

During the next few weeks, there will no doubt be considerable soul-searching amongst the government, the armed forces, political parties, the media, civil society, and certainly foreign governments on how to protect themselves and Pakistan from the Taliban. A parallel examination is overdue on how to protect Pakistan from itself.

There is no country in the history of the world that has ever benefited from having less education. There is none in the modern world that has progressed by having unbridled population growth and also imposing strictures on education.

There are some diehards who believe that the Taliban, having murdered schoolchildren and their teachers, would heed international censure and not attempt anything as heinous again. They would be advised to recall the Bamiyan Buddhas. With every gunshot at those magnificent statues — a soaring monument to faith — the Afghan Taliban attacked simultaneously not just a

religious artefact but civilisation itself. At Bamiyan, they destro­yed our past; at Peshawar the militants have disfigured our future.

While every fibre of positivity in one’s body strains to believe that things will get better, not worse, it will take more than optimism, more than a change of government in Islamabad or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to bring about an improvement in our handling of the Taliban. Imran Khan’s declared views and Nawaz Sharif’s covert policies are suspected of sharing a DNA which seems to have accrued in favour of the Taliban. Whether this latest unspeakable tragedy in Peshawar will make them rethink their policies remains to be seen.

Often, the panacea for grief lies in poetry. Reams of eulogies though cannot compete with this heart-rending observation noted by Clement Freud of the response of an intelligent child to the death of a loved one: “I know he is dead, but I cannot understand why he doesn’t come home to supper.”

The writer is a Pakistani with children and school-going grandchildren.

Published in Dawn December 18th , 2014