warkadang:Peshawar School Attack (December 16, 2014)On December 16, 2014, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan
warkadang:Peshawar School Attack (December 16, 2014)On December 16, 2014, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) occupied the Army Public School on Warsak Road in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. From 12:05 PM to 6:32 PM, around 500 students and teachers were held hostage, and between 120 to 131 people were killed. More than a 100 of these people were children. To many Pakistani locals and officials, it is obvious that the Taliban siege on the Army-run children’s school in Peshawar was a response to the Pakistani military’s Zarb-e-Azb operation (launched on June 15, 2014), which displaced more than one million civilians and killed a disproportionate number of people. The operation was launched in the North Waziristan agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a Pashtun area with a deadly Taliban presence. Apparently, the military operation was launched to eliminate Taliban presence in the area, but it seems as if it fueled more terrorism than it could eliminate.Time and again, Pashtuns have to bear the pain of these Taliban retaliations - this time, in the form of a siege at a children’s school. Bear in mind, this tragic event is not an opportunity for anyone to call for more U.S. drones in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan, nor is it an opportunity for Pakistani nationalist to call for more military operations in the Pashtun areas. It is also not an opportunity for anyone to draw Islamophobic conclusions from. These civilians were massacred, held hostage and severely wounded as a result of an ongoing war between the U.S.-backed Pakistani military and the Taliban. Far too many times, civilians have been trapped in conflicts between the two armed groups, and the outcomes are outright devastating. All we ask is peace. -- source link