Three Bloody Civilians

It really hurts the civilians to hear the phrase ‘bloody civilians’, for the civilians have really loved, honored and revered the defence forces of Pakistan until the recent past. People (except a few) were happy to allow them the major chunk of our national budget. People used to make way and place for them in gatherings. In the war of ’65, people were zealot to empty the city stock of grains and transport halwa poori to the fighting borders, although halwa poori is the last thing a soldier should be eating for it puts one to palatable drowsiness and sleep, but it was the love of the public that made them thoughtless of logic.

All this love was despite the fact that people of the armed forces referred to the civilians as ‘bloody civilians’ in their jokes and idle speech. I do not know the reason why they came up with this phrase for the civilians but this is what I have heard of as long as I can remember it. Despite these degrading remarks, people loved them for the virtue of their profession.

However, all this has changed now. People’s love (except of a few) has changed to shock, hostility and immense anger. And all this has happened post 9/11 when Pakistan joined the so-called war-on-terror and started killing its own people and handing them over to America and even taking booty for it.

People have wanted to voice their thoughts against it. People wanted the defence forces to change their alliance back to Muslims, but they were afraid to do so, for when anyone does so, we have operations like Operation Silence 2007.

Military operations were started in the tribal areas in 2004 and drone attacks have been hitting Pakistan since 2008. But it was finally in November 2011 that a reasonable reaction was given to the aggression of the Americans when the NATO forces attacked an official check-post of the Pakistan army in Mohmand Agency and killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. The army went into a rage. The army gave a strong vocal message, boycotted Bonn Conference, shut down its coordination centers along the Western border, evacuated the Shamsi airbase, and cut-off ground NATO supply-lines to Afghanistan to date.

Alhamdolillah, Pakistan finally took offence to aggression, onslaught and violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. I am glad that those twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were of enough importance that the Pakistani army reacted to their death. I am glad that those twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were of enough importance that the Pakistani army took all those steps which it did. I am glad that those twenty-four Pakistani soldiers were off enough importance that a political commission was set-up to redesign Pak-US relations by the name of Parliamentary Committee on National Security.

However, if I dare to ask, were not Fahim, Faizan and Ubaid-ur-Rahman of any importance? They were cold-bloodedly killed in broad daylight by Raymond Davis, an American agent. And he went scot-free off our land back to America. Except for holding him in comfortable custody for about a month and a half, in which chocolates and assurances were smuggled in to him, absolutely nothing more was done to apprehend the killings. No national or international measures of protest or future defence were taken up except for a demand that America must formally enlist all its agents within Pakistan. What good would that be? They would still go scot-free off our land after each of them killing a handful of Pakistanis.

Was this difference of reaction due to the fact that Fahim, Faizan and Ubaid-ur-Rahman were merely three bloody civilians? It cannot be any other reason. It cannot possibly be due to the difference of death counts between the two incidents, because there are a lot more counts in the closet of the civilians. Over a thousand innocent civilians have been killed in the tribal areas at the wave of America and over a ten thousand are ‘missing’.

With much due respect, it is the taxes of these bloody civilians which formulate the salaries, luxuries and ammunition boxes of the defence forces. Although, in the true spirit, talking about money is an insult to the noble profession of a soldier, however, the civilians are left with no choice except to go down to basic mathematics of financial flow, for a humble plea of basic human rights has not earned the civilians any relief from being picked up, beaten, tortured, raped, missing and/or killed.

The bloody civilians have truly become all bloody today.