Pakistan: A nation unites against the Taliban

The shooting of Malala Yousafzai should shame our religious elite, said The Frontier Post (Peshawar) in an editorial. Across the nation, Pakistanis are united in denouncing the cowardly attack by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) against this 15-year-old girl who had become a leading activist for girls’ education. Many clerics have been loath to speak out against the group, because they sympathize with the aim of imposing strict Islamic sharia law. But these are not true Muslims. By dragging Malala off a bus and shooting her in the head, the TTP has proved they only “wear the mask of a deceptive religiosity” to hide their true identity. They are “vile plain murderers who slaughter even children just for the pleasure of it.”

That’s why there can be no negotiation with these people, said Zafar Hilaly in The News (Karachi). Populist politician Imran Khan persists in advocating talks with the TTP. About what? It’s not as if we can argue theological differences. “The rustic vagabonds and scrofulous rogues, criminals, kidnappers, and functional illiterates that compose the TTP can’t really make head or tail out of passages from the Holy Koran.” They want power, pure and simple, and there’s just one way to deal with such a challenge to our sovereignty: Send in the army to destroy them.

We have enough war already, said Nawa-i-Waqt (Lahore). The West is exploiting the attack on Malala to justify its murderous and indiscriminate drone strikes against “supposed Taliban hideouts in Pakistan.” And plenty in the Pakistani media are falling for it. Now even the army is hinting that it will use Malala as an excuse to launch military operations against our own people in Waziristan. We would do better to launch “a thorough inquiry” into the plausible allegations that those who attacked the girl came from Afghanistan, not the TTP.

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Nice try, said The Nation (Lahore). The TTP has bragged about the attack, and even says it will attack her again if she survives, as is likely. We Pakistanis have finally reached our tipping point and are united in a “desperate wish to see our lands purged of such repulsive evil.” For years now, we have made excuses for the lawlessness in our borderlands—claiming that the TTP has foreign backing or funding, indulging in conspiracy theories involving the U.S., Afghanistan, and others. But what does it matter who is behind the group? The point is that we have become a nation where young girls are unsafe on their way home from school. Pakistan stands at a crossroads. “If we do not stall danger now, the darkness may overwhelm us.”

Malala will be our beacon of light, said Yasser Latif Hamdani in the Daily Times (Lahore). We hope she will not prove a martyr, now that she is being treated in a British hospital and is expected to recover. But she will “no doubt be remembered in history as Pakistan’s Jeanne d’Arc.” Thanks to her courage, “this is the beginning of the end of Taliban tyranny.”