YESTERDAY A CAR bomb in Karachi killed at least 14 people, the majority of them French workers. Near Tel Aviv a Palestinian bomber killed another 15 people, plus himself. Both sets of attacks were tragedies, but very different ones.
The Karachi bomb was a tragedy for the victims — and for Pakistan itself; its credibility is damaged. The Israeli bomb was a tragedy for everyone involved: Victims and bombers alike, their families, the entire Palestinian people, the Israelis as well — a tragedy because the Israeli government is so determined to trample the Palestinians under heel, and has the power to do so, that an entire nation has been reduced to desperation, and through desperation to extreme violence where even self is of no concern. The action of the bomber is the action of the voiceless, the victim with no other way of hitting back at the oppressor. And whether we approve or not, it is also an act that has the support of almost all Palestinians, a people overwhelmed with half a century of occupation and no means left to scream out to the world the injustice they have to endure.
The car bomb in Karachi fits none of that. It was not an act of desperation. It was not the work of the voiceless. Pakistan is not an occupied country, unable to defeat the occupier. This was terrorism as the whole world understands it. It was repulsive, barbarous and evil. And the Pakistanis themselves are appalled by it.
The situation in Pakistan is in no way similar to that suffered by the Palestinians. No one can say that opposition to the government is without a voice or a means of getting its view across. The Pakistani media are fiercely critical of the government when theywant. What about the referendum last week? It was as acceptable a means of consultation as any to be found. The fact that the opposition boycotted it changes nothing. They did so because they concluded that they would not win, even if the vote was fair. But they knew that a vast percentage of voters would not participate whatever the issue; they opted to exploit public indifference to politics. They would have taken part if they seriously imagined they could have defeated Gen. Musharraf. That was their decision.
But Pakistan must now be deemed to have spoken. The Musharraf government has to be accepted as legitimate. The bombers do not care for legitimacy. They do not care for anything. What exactly had French workers ever done to hurt or harm Pakistan?
These are people from a country that has consistently tried to uphold a degree of morality in international politics, a country that never ceases to annoy Washington because of its willingness to question and challenge US policies, particularly in the Middle East, a country that is noted for its sympathy toward the Palestinians and criticism of the Israelis. Can we therefore assume that the Pakistani militants, in killing French nationals, are closet anti-Palestinians and pro-Israelis? That is a logical conclusion.
The reality, of course, is that Pakistan’s terrorists do not care who they kill. It might as easily have been a group of Palestinian, American or even Saudi foreign workers. What they want is maximum carnage for the shock effect. They are the ETA of Pakistan’s politics, its IRA.
They represent no one but themselves and are nothing but barbarous bullies who imagine that they can intimidate the Pakistani public into accepting their diktats.
In their own way, they are no different to Ariel Sharon. They imagine that they can terrorize a nation into submission. They constitute Pakistan’s very own version of fascism. Musharraf must crack down on them.
