It was another grim day for humanity as the news of a Taliban attack on a school in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan sent shock waves through the world. Six gunmen wearing military fatigues entered a cantonment school’s premises and taking small children as hostages, three of them blew themselves up, unleashing bloody hours of unspeakable brutality and violence that has left at least 130 dead. Scores of the dead were innocent children who left home to embrace another day of learning and fun and whose lives were brutally extinguished by a terrorist outfit that has become a cancer for Pakistan.
Taliban’s spokesman Mohammad Umar Khorasani termed this an act of retaliation and chose to interpret his massacre of children as a token of pain to those who had launched anti-Taliban offensives in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency. If ever there was a message for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that the time has come to step up to the plate and rid Pakistan of its festering rot, it is now. He must iron-clad his resolve and using his greater alliance with the Army, a partnership that has been fortunately increasingly on display in recent months, embark on a programme of exterminating the Taliban. In launching its offensive against the terrorist outfit, Pakistan took the first decisive steps in dealing with its implosive terrorism.
Even though it set off on a path that is like a razor’s edge, the truth is, there is no going back. The country has paid an extreme price for its earlier prevarications on dealing with the Taliban and now, for the sake of its internal stability, its bilateral ties with neighbouring countries and its credibility in the international community, Sharif must treat this latest act of Taliban’s bestiality as the trigger for an all-out offensive that will rid Pakistan of its scourge. It is time all opposition parties set aside their differences and offer unequivocal support to Sharif. The deaths of scores of innocent Pakistani children cannot be allowed to be in vain.
Every one of those children was growing up with dreams for their country. Sharif needs to make every one of those dreams count.