Safora Carnage

The Safora tragedy was simply horrendous and there are no two opinions about it. Such wanton killing of the innocent MUST stop. While none else than the state itself is responsible for the safety of life and property of its people, can’t we ourselves as a potential someday possible victims do something about it? For how long we shall keep lamenting about, giving statements and promising without accomplishing to take to hell such extremists?

There were more than sixty persons in the ill fated bus and the number of the terrorists was only four.  Agreed, they were armed. But keeping in view the space constraints of the bus these four would have stood in the aisle and in a row one after the other. Again, they didn’t spray the bullets randomly but took pot shots at the heads from very close quarters killing 18 of them in this manner. They ordered the occupants to put their heads down which they ‘obediently’ did! Agreed again, the Ismalie community is a very docile and peace loving one but when it comes to one’s life, even a squirrel charges back when it finds no escape. Why didn’t any one of them while still keeping his head down lunge at the feet of the assailant and felled him dragging him abruptly and ferociously? This one act could have created a commotion in the bus that would have saved many lives.  But --- but  we are not trained for such emergencies. We are not t! aught in our schools any such life saving measures as is done in other lands.  Even the Kindergarten kids of ALL schools in Japan know how to take shelter under their desks if an earth quake strikes. It is high time we followed them in our schools and societies and trained ourselves to cope up with such emergencies.  We should prepare ourselves for such eventualities and not depend upon the state only.

Anybody listening?  

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)