Yesterday's suicide attack on lower-and middle class citizens of Lahore, celebrating Easter or enjoying Sunday festivities in a park, is devastating to behold. The victims, now numbered in 100s, were enjoying the few, free pleasures of Lahore's public spaces at the Gulshan Iqbal Park. In targeting a public park, knowing full well that it is where families would be, the Ahrar are hitting spaces which are not secured and which provide religious cover for them-- they have claimed this, and last year's bombings at Youhanabad in Lahore. In both cases, the claimed targets are Christians.
In the aftermath of the horrific Peshawar school assault in December 2014 a new narrative emerged in Pakistan. One in which the military, with the face of General Raheel Sharif, was provided all public support for military operations in N. Waziristan-- including "indigenous drones". That war has continued un-abated while Raheel Sharif's personhood has become the face of a "resilient" Pakistan.
Lahore. Lahore in 2016 is a new city of enclaves, suburbs, brand new cars, boutiques, parked money from Dubai and Karachi. Its moneyed homes are well-protected. Its elite do not congregate; and when they gather in movie halls or public spaces, they do so behind security columns and checkpoints. Lahore in 2016 is also a key migratory point for young men from southern Punjab and northern territories who are enrolled in schools, madrasas or employed in the many factories dotting its circumference. The state has poured millions of tons of concrete over Lahore to build new highways and train-lines. The cement houses of "old" Lahore are now crumbling. This "old" Lahore is the Lahore of Allama Iqbal Town, Model Town, Sadr, Walton, Gulshan-e Ravi. This is the Lahore whose denizens would head to the public park to celebrate Eid or Easter. These are the Lahoris who make for easy targets-- the loss of whose lives is not going to prompt the State to re-think its relationship to terrorists.
A few days ago, the attack in Brussels hit close to home for me. I have been pre-occupied by safety of loved ones. Lahore remains the only city I can ever call home. I worry about my family, friends, colleagues who are scattered across Lahore's surface. The vast majority of them outside of securitized compounds. Raheel Sharif is promising that the aggressors behind this attack, who are from Southern Punjab, will be militarily handled. I have done my research in southern Punjab and I know well what the State sees there. There is no security that I can imagine coming to Lahore from further militarization. Nor do I imagine lack of action to be fruitful. The fact is that we have vast swathes of everyday citizenry trapped in a singular militarized discourse for nearly thirty years now. The leaders of political or religious parties, the apparatchiks, the followers, the crowds, the missing majorities, all. The textbooks remain full of incitement to violence. The media gleefully cheers shredding the few who speak against. Those who survive the media are silenced by bullets.
The Pakistani civilian state has clearly articulated its preference for a technocratic solution to Pakistan. The military state remains agnostic-- supporting Nawaz Sharif when it feels like, while building its new idol, Raheel Sharif. The recent execution of the murderer of Salman Taseer, and the subsequent 'release' of his son are evidences of the first state. The capture of the RAW agent and the current "dharna" in Islamabad cases in point for the latter. This is not a dialectical struggle for the soul of Pakistan, however. This is not the classic "an army for the country vs a country for the army", either. It is the contest of who will control the flow of Capital into Pakistan and who gets to park it in which parts. This young country with an near-infinite pool of cheap labor is the final prize in a contest between the many reigning idols of chaos and commerce.