> The latest Karachi carnage: be sad, be angry, but remember the context…

Do you want to know what its like when my people are being torn apart? Literally? Live? On camera?

Click here.

It’s not gory: they either blurred out that part on purpose, or maybe the cameraman couldn’t get good footage in the confusion. Either way, what this video conveys is the sheer horror of a suicide attack on a civilian target.

One moment, they were celebrating. Music, dancing, flags. A populace stricken by poverty, which grasps eagerly at any opportunity for a celebration. Raza Rumi said it much better than I could hope to:

She had arrived much like the Greek characters – tearful, maligned, triumphant and a little pawn in the hands of the gods. Amid the voices of criticism and hypocrisy that fail to note the complexity of our times, she emerged as a people’s woman – once again. Here were the loyalists dancing, singing and clapping – their queen, exiled and beaten had re-emerged.

They couldn’t care about the cost or the process. That was for the armchair classes of Pakistan to ponder about. The pull of Bhutto-name for the have-nots was once again re-established. So began a journey on the blood-lined roads of Karachi that have cracked with violence, blood and lawlessness. Yet they moved ahead oblivious of the fault lines that run from the drab, destroyed villages of Afghanistan to Karachi passing through a web of seminaries, officialdom and Lal Masjids of this world.

And so halfway, this peaceful journey – a testament of what the real Pakistan is all about – halted. And, something had erupted: imperial projects, state diktats and the crumbling centre. There were flesh, blood, fire and tears. And the wretched TV screens have documented all of this.

Two blasts rent the air in quick succession. And the celebrations were over. We’re talking of more than 130 lives, all lost in vain.

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But even as we condemn this bloody attack, it is vital to remember that every act of terrorism has a context. Contrary to the tripe fed to us by Washington and its mouth-pieces in the Pakistani establishment, people do not just blow themselves up without a good reason to do so.

Think of yourself, dear reader. Why is it that YOU don’t strap explosives on yourself and blow yourself up? Clearly, it is because you have no reason to do so.

Over the past few weeks, we Pakistanis have watched as our predatory military “lashed out” at “militant strongholds” in the north-west of Pakistan. Remember how Mir Ali was bombed? Remember how hundreds of innocent people lost their lives there? Or perhaps you want me to refresh your memory? Click here, in that case.

Remember how these innocent people were no less innocent than those who died in the midnight blasts in Karachi?

You see, the American government would dearly like to portray all those whom it fights as “terrorists”. And it would dearly love to de-contextualize all acts of “terrorism”, but only from the other side. Governments don’t like to admit their own acts of terror.

And the Pakistani military regime, along with its newfound political whore (Benazir Bhutto), would also like to portray its enemies in this light. After all, what is our government, if not a pathetic caricature of its American masters?

Tonight, I speak on behalf of those two young men who ended their lives on the streets of Karachi, and took more than 130 innocent people with them. I speak for them, not because I endorse their actions in any way, but because:

• they’re dead.
• the pseudo-liberal media would love to de-humanize them and follow the line of the establishment, turning those mis-guided young men into faceless, heartless, evil minions of a mythically-powerful organization called “Al-Qaeda” or “The Taliban” or something else along those lines.
• every act of terrorism is political in nature, and therefore has a context. If we don’t understand this context, we can never get to the root of the violence. And if we don’t do that, we’ll remain trapped in a cycle of violence.

We Pakistanis now have two choices in dealing with this situation.

We can try to understand the root of the violence, and end it. We must put an end to acts of state terror in the north-west of Pakistan by our military government.
Or else, we can act like the American ruling-class and pretend that terrorist attacks on our soil have no connection with our actions in the past.

Dear reader, if you were equally outraged when our military attacked market-places in broad daylight in Mir Ali, then you have a right to be angry over the blasts in Karachi.

If, however, you think of those “tribals” in the north-west as subhumans who can be slaughtered whenever Bush wants it…in other words, if you think like the brutal military regime which rules Pakistan, then guess what…

The suicide bombers who struck in Karachi had a message for YOU. They passed it on with a bang that cost us scores of innocent lives.

Solidarity with the loved ones of all those who died in the Karachi blasts…