Source: BBC/AFP
Two incidents which have received maximum media coverage in the past few days. The first is the Australian siege which resulted in two deaths. My comments related to this incident are pretty much in concurrence with Russell Brand. The man holding people hostage was mentally unstable but the leading narrative in the news reports was the political motivation aspect. The only point I would add which reinforces the notion that certain news items are given precedence to forward an agenda, is that around the same time the hostage situation in Australia unravelled, a US marine, Brad Stone, had shot six people and was still at large. Yet this was rendered to the lowers portions of the online right-wing papers possibly with the hope that nobody sees it.
The Attack on the Public School
The second incident which also garnered much media attention was the horrific attack on an Pakistani Army public school by a faction of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). Once again the victims of the great game are innocent children, murdered by vengeful killers.
Most reports singularly used “Taliban” to describe the group and narrated the incident in isolation as the events occurred in a vacuum. Let’s not decontextualize this incident. The Pakistani Taliban were formed when they splintered from the Aghan Taliban after the American invasion of Afghanistan, due to their differing goals. As such the Pakistani Taliban crossed the border into Waziristan and started a campaign against Pakistani military targets (against the direction of the Afghan Taliban) in pursuit of control over the FATA areas (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). (The ethnic tension here can be traced to British cartography of 1893, with Mortimer Durand splitting the area covering Pashto-speaking people in half, with one half under British administration, and the other under King Abdul Rahman Khan. This persisted with the formation of Pakistan, the border has been as porous as the artificial lines drawn in the Middle East). Marking a significant turning point which spurred more attacks against Pakistani targets was the Chenagai US drone attack on an Islamic school with express authorisation from former President Pervez Musharaf. 69 children among the 80 civilians were killed. Retaliation and revenge thereafter has been an ongoing affair. Drone strikes killing innocent civilians thereafter continued to feature as a fuel for violence.
CoolnessofHind 