When you overdo something, you are bound to get exposed. When an explosion rocked Charsadda district in Pakistan’s North Western Frontier Province killing about 60 Eid Al-Adha Namazis, hardly any Muslim was prepared to accept the international media and even half-hearted official version that it was a suicide attack. Even several political analysts and television channels initially said that it was just a blast, perhaps caused by a bomb planted much before the Namaz time.
The first thing needs to be understood at the very outset. How is it that just a couple of hours after the devastating explosion the entire international media were blaring at the house-top voice that the suicide bomber was in the second row of the mosque and the former Federal Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, who was the target of attack, in the first row. The mosque is situated in the vicinity of the former minister’s house in the Sherpao village of Charsadda district.
How can the story of blast and the suicide theory come out almost simultaneously? After all it would have been enough for radio and TV listeners to just know about the tragedy. How can this fact be ascertained so quickly. The first thing in the first couple of hours the authorities and social workers do is to rush the victims to hospital, provide blood and console the family members. Ideally the media should initially concentrate on reporting on death toll and condition of the injured in hospitals. The media reports should help identify the victims.
But in recent years many international reporters are not doing these jobs at all. They are rather busy cooking up fantastic theories of suicide moments after any incident takes place. Therein lies the crux of the matter.
At Eidgah or Masjid there is absolutely no scope whatsoever for any explosive-laden jeep to ram into the target. Therefore, one cannot even put up one or two witnesses to spread the theory that such and such person or vehicle rushed towards the target. The initial television reports said that the people were engrossed in Namaz when the blast took place. If that was the situation then how can it be confirmed within no time that the so-called suicide bomber was in the second row.
However, the BBC television ten hours after the blast said that the attack took place moments after the Namaz was completed. It also quoted one of the witnesses who said that he only heard a blast and knew nothing how it had happened.
Be it in Iraq or Afghanistan, Pakistan or India or anywhere in the world it is the media which throw up the fantastic suicide – or any other – theory. Most of the time the official version only follows them.
One can accept the fidayeen attack story as here the attackers are visible. But suicide attack theory is really extremely difficult to ascertain, and all too impossible within a mosque or Eidgah because the supposed witnesses also die. How is it that the witness who saw the suicide bomber triggering a blast never dies in such a situation?
It is not that suicide attacks have never taken place anywhere in the world. But the manner in which the time-bomb blasts are being propagated as a suicide bombing really raises suspicion. Several western experts, like Seymour Hersh, have talked about the presence of Mossad and CIA agents in Iraq. They are not only confined to that country, but to Afghanistan, Pakistan and may be even India.
With media to cover up the actual story it is very easy to trigger such blasts and then give it the colour of suicide blasts. In the past secret agencies of many countries, including the US-trained Savak of Shah Iran, were expert in such type of bombing. They just want to paint the picture of their opponents – Islam – in the blackest of colours.
There is no dearth of literature highlighting these nefarious acts of secret agencies. And to understand the media-criminal tie-up one can read Arthur Hailey’s novel, The Morning News.
It remains a mystery as to why in these countries no such suicide bomber has yet been caught before he/she actually succeeds in triggering the blast.
Let the global media propagate that the target of the suicide bomber was actually Sherpao, the former minister, but the truth is that he is certainly not such a big leader to survive two suicide bombings within a year. And how a suicide bomber managed to enter the mosque when there was a metal detector installed there?
The purpose was simply to tarnish the image of one of the holiest days of Islam by carrying out such bombings. After all last year they chose Eid Al-Adha to divide Shias and Sunnis by getting Saddam Hussein executed on the same day. Many of the suicide theories are fast turning out to be blatant lies.