Peshawar Tragedy: Some basic fact checking, the Media Monolith tends to ignore

The whole world is busy explaining the events from yesterday in Peshawar. We all have our own ways of expression at individual and professional levels. In fact, individual expressions beamed on the media become collective images. I see an anchor arriving from Karachi and hovering at LRH, looking for interviewees. His prime target is to find a loved one who has lost a loved one and make him/her cry in public. He couldn’t find many and had to remain content with doctors and someone whose loved one escaped death with minor physical injuries. There were others who did follow their prey to homes (these were the local guys) and had a good rating by making the viewers cry. Well, this is media. And this is what most of people in this business call a human touch. Let me tell you guys, its NOT! I think breaking a few stereotypes/misconceptions would be great for a beginning. Images that we just built last night with the help of the global media enterprise in our effort to be “global”. First, Army Public School was a school where kids, like any other school going kids, studied. It was not a military school. It was a school where kids of military men went along with other civilian kids. And again all the kids did not belong to military officers. In the services there are also lower ranks where parents have similar problems as any of the lower middle class, poor ones with little incomes. Fees were lower for the forces’ kids, while civilian kids used to pay more. But the fees were affordable enough and the education was at a par with other private schools, at times better than many. And last but not least, the parents’ preference to get their children educated at this school was not due to any misplaced notion of hobnobbing with the brass. It was just good quality education. So much for the simple fact of defining the school. Now where is it located? It is not simply about military area, which is highly secure. This is not a solely military inhabited area. Warsak road leads to Peshawar’s suburbs, a number of villages. This road also has the largest number of private schools where most of the kids of the same age as the ones died on Tuesday go for leaning. And the talk about adjacency to the tribal areas is another misconception the Pakistani mainstream creates in collusion with the global media industry. Peshawar University and Hayatabad are nearer to Khyber agency than the area where this school is located could be to Mohmand Agency. Adding spice to demography to make it sellable at the cost of basic facts is extremely unethical by any standards. And the majority of the private schools being here and parents being satisfied with their children studying there is a testament to the fact that it was not situated in the middle of the wild west of Pakistan. Checking basic demographic facts is always good. Google mapping amidst drumming is no journalism. Its not even good story telling. The next question is whether people would be feeling safe to send their kids to any school at all, or to the ones in this area, let alone Army Public School? It is the future of education in this city that is at stake. The narrative of “we are united” is not worth. The politicians gathering in Peshawar won’t be there forever. And even if they are, it will merely add to the city’s security load at a time when its security apparatus should be least bothered with VIP security. The way ahead should be the immediate topic, not the rotten word juggling with the same sordid faces who change mantles like stage performers to earn their “dishonest buck”. And last but not least, the city is in shock and this is not symbolic. The rotten narrative of Pashtoon bravery should be kept aside and the real fact of everyone feeling afraid for today and tomorrow of their children should be the discourse. Getting images from schools from Punjab and Sindh with slogan chanting kids won’t change the reality on the ground. The false hope this city has developed during the last few months is no more. The fear of uneasy calm being the harbinger of a huge storm has proven right and now we are all right in its eye. By “we” I mean people of Peshawar and KPK (FATA included). The rest can surely praise us for our bravery and we appreciate it. But we know that in reality we are all alone amidst all this. This is the sad reality we need to understand and others, to acknowledge. Pakistan has yet to grow beyond provincial boundaries of ethnic divide. Until then, every unit stands alone amid the empty rhetoric of unity.