pakistaniparadigms-blog

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Nothing left to do by cry for our country. Cry and grieve and when that is over...we plan. When the grief is done, we strategize: how do we rid our country of this evil? 

After we cry, we stop to learn. Who are these people and where did they really come from? We can kill the combatants but how do we kill the ideology?

PESHAWAR: A teenage survivor of Tuesday’s Taliban attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar school described how he played dead after being shot in both legs by insurgents hunting down students to kill.

Militants rampaged through the army-run school in Peshawar and killed at least 130 people, most of them children, in one of the bloodiest ever attacks in Pakistan.

Speaking from his bed in the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, Shahrukh Khan, 16, said he and his classmates were in a careers guidance session in the school auditorium when four gunmen wearing paramilitary uniforms burst in.

“Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” he said, adding that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) before opening fire.

“Then one of them shouted: ‘There are so many children beneath the benches, go and get them’,” Khan told AFP.

“I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.” Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee.

He decided to play dead, adding: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream.

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again.

“My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me — I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

The Army Public School is attended by boys and girls from both military and civilian backgrounds.

As his father, a shopkeeper, comforted him in his blood-soaked bed, Khan recalled: “The men left after some time and I stayed there for a few minutes. Then I tried to get up but fell to the ground because of my wounds.

“When I crawled to the next room, it was horrible. I saw the dead body of our office assistant on fire,” he said.

“She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.”

It was not immediately clear how the female employee’s body caught fire, though her remains were also later seen by an AFP reporter in a hospital mortuary.

Khan, who said he also saw the body of a soldier who worked at the school, crawled behind a door to hide and then lost conciousness. “When I woke up I was lying on the hospital bed,” he added.

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I am speechless. I am speechless that two hours away from where I live, over a hundred and forty children have died. I am speechless. My brothers, my sisters. They aren’t with us anymore, and I am speechless. I can’t tell you how much I’ve cried today, I can’t tell you how depressed, disgusted, sad, horrified and shocked I am at this act of terrorism in the name of ‘God’.

It’s numbing to even try and think about what the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters feel like right now - I can’t even imagine what it’s like, to send your child to school asking him to do his very best on his mid year, telling him you believe in him, telling him not to leave a single question empty. He left the world instead.

Please don’t think we aren’t important because we aren’t from the well known Western countries. Please don’t let the lives lost be defined by race, language, nation. Please don’t think we deserve this because our oppressors and us, we share a religion - because if these terrorists are ‘muslims’, then I am not. (And believe me when I tell you they’re not. They don’t know anything about Islam, because if they did they would hesitate to use harsh words, let alone guns.)

It takes two seconds to make a prayer. It takes two seconds to spread the word. It takes two seconds to make someone see that the oppressed and oppressors are different, even if they share a religon.

I hope you will remember that little, innocent children and teachers did not ask for this. I hope you will remember that a teacher got burned alive trying to save the students. I hope you will remember that raising your voice against evil is the first step to eliminate it from our society.

[pakistaniparadigms-blog]

Dead Children.

Count to 135.

I don’t mean count to 135 as fast as you can like you’re a kid trying to get your turn on the swings.

I mean really count to 135, enunciate every god damn syllable- make it the slowest 2 minutes of your entire life.

That’s how many children, teachers, and helpers lost their lives today in Peshawar, Pakistan. All they were trying to do was get an education; they left home this morning ready to learn and they’ll be returned in coffins.

"The smallest coffins are the heaviest."

[pakistaniparadigms-blog]

The attack started at 10:00 local time (05:00 GMT). Mudassir Awan, a worker at the school, said he saw six people scaling the walls of the school. "We thought it must be the children playing some game," he told Reuters news agency. "But then we saw a lot of firearms with them. "As soon as the firing started, we ran to our classrooms," he said. "They were entering every class and they were killing the children." A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School’s auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students. Locals said they also heard the screams of students and teachers. The dead are said to include teachers, as well as a paramilitary soldier. Gunfire and loud explosions were heard as security forces hunted down the militants. A doctor at the local Lady Reading hospital said many of the students were in “very bad condition”, with severe head wounds. Frantic parents are gathering at hospitals to find out if their children are safe. Many of the students were the children of military personnel. Most of them would have been aged 16 or under. The school is at the edge of a military cantonment in Peshawar, which has seen some of the worst of the violence during the Taliban insurgency in recent years.

BBC News (via smallworld-drop)

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India shows the world what compassion looks like with #IndiaWithPakistan

The safety of a nation’s children trumps all.

No matter what problems the two countries have, Indians are putting aside their differences with Pakistanis today in a show of solidarity following an atrocious attack on a school in Peshawar. Taking a sign from #IllRideWithYou, some Indians are using the tag #IndiaWithPakistan on Twitter, proving that love and peace shouldn’t be contained within borders.

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stevemccurry:

Kalash Girl, Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan

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Pakistani-American father and son pilots set out to travel the world in 30 days to raise 1m USD for education in Pakistan

News: Around the world in 30 days

Project website

Follow us on Facebook | Twitter or Submit something or Just Ask!

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Roughly half a million people have been displaced by the Pakistani government’s military offensive into the tribal area of North Waziristan, and all signs show that the crisis will only worsen in the coming days and weeks.

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Sab Ki Dil Ki Dua Hai Aye Ramzan ,Ta Qayamat Rahe Ye PAKISTAN Har Musalman Shaad Baad Rahe Na Larey Bhai Se Koi Bhai ..

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Sabzi Mandi by Pakistani streetscape artist Fahad Khan (2011)

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Karachi by Night- Zubeida Khan 1956, Oil on board, 30″ x 26.5″ [source]

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Protests Across Pakistan After Blasts Killing Minority Shia Muslims in Mastung

The protests against the killing of Shia pilgrims in a bombing in Balochistan's Mastung district were observed across the nation on Thursday including Karachi, Quetta, Lahore, Islamabad, and Hyderabad. (DAWN News)

The family and friends of the dead, as well as those standing in solidarity, host heart wrenching sit-ins (dharnas) across Pakistan, refusing to bury their dead until action is finally taken about violence against minorities in Pakistan.

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A Pakistani man carrying a child rushes away from the site of a car bombing in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan. (Mohammad Sajjad/AP)

Source

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Young boys in Pakistan play football

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Azme Alishan and Behtar Pakistan presents a mini documentary featuring Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi of Pakistan Youth Alliance who seeks to empower the youth to be  socially and politically active by taking part in shaping the nation's future instead of not doing anything at all. The main goal is to create awareness amongst the youth and make them realize that only by their efforts can they make a better Pakistan. Pakistan Youth Alliance is an organization which aims to unite the youth of this nation regardless of their religion, race, caste or language and help them contribute towards the future of Pakistan on an unbiased forum.

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Pakistan

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Call to Prayer, Pakistan.