As the madness has engulfed Pakistan over the last few years, Lahore has remained the only major city safe from suicide bombings. That is no longer true, as a suicide bomber struck today in the heart of the provincial capital. The bomber targeted police who had assembled for the weekly lawyers' rally. 23 people have died (20 of them police).
Pakistan has become a crisis society, stumbling from one awful and shocking event to another. All we know how to do anymore is to respond to crises. The crisis of the moment gets our attention. We work on that issue, and then another crisis comes along to distract us and throw us off course completely. I was thinking this yesterday as I attended an activist meeting in which we debated whether to focus on the aata crisis, or the mass arrests in Sindh crisis, or the ethnic tension/interprovincial harmony crisis, or the upcoming Shia-Sunni crisis (which has been predicted by all due to the start of Muharram tomorrow). The longer I stay in Pakistan, the more and more I think that these crises are a way to keep us busy and dissipate our energies. It's hard not to be a conspiracy theorist here! And I used to disdain those types...
Pakistan has become a crisis society, stumbling from one awful and shocking event to another. All we know how to do anymore is to respond to crises. The crisis of the moment gets our attention. We work on that issue, and then another crisis comes along to distract us and throw us off course completely. I was thinking this yesterday as I attended an activist meeting in which we debated whether to focus on the aata crisis, or the mass arrests in Sindh crisis, or the ethnic tension/interprovincial harmony crisis, or the upcoming Shia-Sunni crisis (which has been predicted by all due to the start of Muharram tomorrow). The longer I stay in Pakistan, the more and more I think that these crises are a way to keep us busy and dissipate our energies. It's hard not to be a conspiracy theorist here! And I used to disdain those types...
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