EDITORIAL: Provincial and federal authorities seem to have been too busy tossing the blame around to prevent the disaster unfolding in Kurram agency from getting completely out of control. Now, with roads closed for more than two months and hospitals having run out of essential medical supplies, children have started losing their lives due to shortage of medicines.
This situation could have been, and indeed was, foreseen when all access to the area was closed, yet nobody did a thing about it and now we have innocent children dying because of official neglect and nobody to answer for it.
According to the medical superintendent of District Headquarters Hospital Parachinar, “In addition to the 29 children who have died, several other patients have lost their lives due to the unavailability of surgical services.” He went on to warn of an “impending healthcare crisis” if urgent measures are not taken to provide medical services and restore services.
It’s not just medicines that are in short supply, of course, because the government’s decision to shut down all roads in and out of the area has also, quite expectedly, triggered food shortage. Residents could see these problems coming because they have experienced such situations far too many times in the past and, as always, their concerns fell on deaf ears as the government resorted to its typical, kneejerk policy of enforcing a shutdown.
Lately, some aid agencies have airlifted some food and medical supplies to the region, but they are not nearly enough as the death toll races past the 200 mark, with malnutrition and disease taking hold, and still no end in sight to the decades-old land dispute that caused the latest round of killing, which quickly turned sectarian in nature.
While Kurram has been volatile owing to its religious/sectarian mix since the days of the so-called anti-Soviet jihad because its unique “Parrot’s Beak” border that juts into Afghanistan made it a special target for militants, recent episodes of violence are rooted in the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) takeover of the area a decade ago; before it was cleansed in successive military operations. Yet it turns out that militants were able to keep sleeper cells that go active now and then.
Surely, such disruption cannot go on forever. Every time Kurram flares up the government looks for quick, patch-up solutions that will put a lid on the fighting and restore some manner of calm. This approach needs to change and make way for a more enduring arrangement.
It is true that locals harm their own cause more than any outside party by sticking to extreme positions and turning hostile when their demands are not met. But that, too, is because they know the government is not serious about a permanent solution.
The best way to proceed is to let the law take its course. Whatever pockets of insurgents remain hidden in the region must be eliminated and whoever has lost life and limb to the unending sectarian nightmare must be adequately compensated. Once justice is seen to be done, making tribes fall in line will be more easily achievable.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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