The whole world accuses us of bloodletting. We are in denial. We have failed in catching up with the pace of events we ourselves set in motion unwittingly many decades ago. With uncanny persistency we have refused to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. We are in two minds how to deal with the monster that is chipping way our very existence. The nation being in the acutest of turmoil in its chequered history is on the mercy of spineless leadership which is ideologically confounded rather flabbergasted.

Unfortunately, this is the time when Pakistan really needed a leadership clear in vision, strong in belief and stout in conviction to serve the nation optimally.

The termination of talks with Taliban which, in fact, had never really started have shown that talks alone, and from a position of weakness too, cannot yield peace. They have never done so in human history and, will never do for us. God will not change the fact of life to show his miracle to people who have lived so far with so much injustice in the name of God and Islam.
                                     Asif Zardari & Nawaz Sharief
Pakistan fortunately does not have legs and won't run away. However, Pakistan, as Pakistan of Jinnah and Iqbal, will not remain the same. There is already nothing unique in the nomenclature. The name does not espouse old feelings of peace, serenity, innocence and placid life anymore; the life which was only disturbed by occasional thunder of gleeful laughter of youngsters or noisy pranks of gaily dressed children in parks.

Now a days there is no peace and there is lots of  noise around us; louder, scary noise. And there is only one colour left around us; red colour. Maimed, charred and disfigured bodies, flying organs, crying babies holding on to the breasts of their dead mothers, scared old men women and children dazed by the inhumanity strewn all around them are here only to augment its deathly impact. Pakistan has already changed; to worse.

It did not happen overnight. The process of our slow and painful death started many decades ago. There was  a fatal flaw in the politics of the country since beginning. The country was run by so-called secularists, however, the Beards, simpletons who are only rivaled in their destructiveness by their passion for ignorance and its dissemination, augmented the process of death later.

These Frankenstein monsters we created in the seventies have now come of age and  are ready   to gulp down their own creator. That which was created to destroy others have come back to destroy us. Shakespeare in Macbeth eminently summed up such situation.

“     …                            But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.”
        Ch Iftikhar Ahmed, the most controversial Chief Justice of Pakistan
We have become a sorry personification of ' As ye sow, so shall ye reap''; 'if you dig the pit for others one day you'll fall into it yourself'; and 'He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him." Ecclesiastes 10:8.  In Psalms 7:15-16, it goes like this "He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate."

In the name of Jihad we abandoned all golden teachings of Islam to run society on just lines and opted out all that was devilish, unnecessary and futile. God Almighty in the Quran says, '' Whoever participates in a good cause, will be rewarded. Whoever participates in an evil cause, will bear the consequences thereof, Allah oversees all things.'' 4:85 The Quran further says, '' Do not fight wars of aggression.2:190 ''Good and evil are not the same. Repel evil with goodness. That way your enemies will become your friends.'' 41:34

We did not reach out to the enemy and preferred violence over diplomacy. We sowed the seeds of our own downfall. Today we are 
reaping what we had sown. This is the harvest of our foolish leaders whose policies led Pakistan astray. When Jamaat e Islami was acting as auxiliary militia in East Pakistan in 1971 it was only playing out the role that was directed by General Headquarters and inter-Services Intelligence. Weakling political leadership was always on board. Who's to blame?
                    Terrorists captured are rarely punished in Pakistan
The religious right, the fundamentalists, the product of rage and ignorance, danced on the tunes orchestrated by the secular powers that be. Their role in 1977 agitation against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was monumental to the complete satisfaction of their masters. General Zia, the darkest face of obscurantism in Pakistan,  augmented Jamat-e Islami role as team 'B' of military regime. Then came the Afghanistan Jihad of early eighties against Soviet occupation of 
Afghanistan. Zia toeing the line of his masters opted out for militancy as against diplomacy. We forgot that violence only breeds violence. In an urge to serve our masters well we forgot all about the teachings of Islam as regards our neighbours' rights on us. Rather we were happy to see various brands of Jihadi outfits among us active on both fronts: Afghanistan and Kashmir.

After the Kargal debacle we squarely realized that violence cannot replace diplomacy and after the so called Russian defeat in Afghanistan we came to the bitter realization that the abstract concept of strategic depth on our western flanks was nothing more than an aberration. Now as we are left out in the open, our enemies of our own making are well trenched in the folds of innocent citizenry or they are nebulous in the layers of rocky mountains in 
the North. People flabbergasted along with their masters do not know what tomorrow entails for them.

The Quran says, ''It is good to help the poor and make peace.'' 4:114 
However, peace cannot be reached with criminals. Then other verses of the Quran on justice guide us. ''O ye who believe! Be ye staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves or (your) parents or (your) kindred, whether (the case be of) a rich man or a poor man, for Allah is nearer unto both (them ye are). So follow not passion lest ye lapse (from truth) and if ye lapse or fall away, then lo! Allah is ever Informed of what ye do.'' 4:135 (Pickthall)

Rulers' soft corner for terrorists is deadlier than the suicide bombings. We must have an unambiguous policy against terrorism. We should only talk with those who want to talk under the parameters of the constitution and abandon violence as means to political gains. No talks can be held with criminals, terrorists and foreign agents who want to destroy the country and tarnish its ideology.  Our forefathers did this in the early days of Islam and we should do the same. We can be in for a long haul with terrorists, but this  is how nations survive.