IN the two months that have now elapsed since the attack on the Army Public School, much has changed in the country.

Dazed citizens have had to adjust to a series of unpalatable realities, the lifting of the moratorium on executions and the setting up of military courts being just one dimension.

Some of the measures the state and provincial administrations have considered necessary to adopt may or may not have far-reaching and negative consequences.

Also read: Teachers undergo weapons training

But there is one particular path that can already be identified and on which the country has already set foot that will without a shadow of doubt lead to an even more violent future: that of further militarising the population.

Since the APS attack, around the country children enter their schools as gunmen stand by. As reported in this paper on Sunday, the enhanced security measures at one school in Peshawar include a guard who used to be the office peon, and whose training in the use of guns lasted just one day.

KP’s decision to give school teachers training in the use of weapons and, in case of an attack, expect them to act as the first line of defence was shocking.

The problem that is developing, though, is much larger than just protecting educational institutions. On Thursday, the Peshawar High Court directed the provincial government to award licences of prohibited-bore weapons to lawyers, as is already the case for doctors and teachers.

The issue is not just about arms in untrained hands, even though accidental shootings have already occurred: it is the apparent attempt to counter guns by putting more weapons on the street, in the hands of people who do not represent state authority.

It is perhaps a sign of the grim times we are living in that the trend has not received the serious and critical societal debate it merits. But the alarm bells must be sounded, for this is exactly the sort of slippery slope that leads down to the abyss.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2015

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