(By AFP)
A Pakistani teenager who sacrificed his life to stop a suicide bomber, saving the lives of hundreds of students, has been honoured with the country’s highest award for bravery. Aitzaz Hassan, 15, a student in Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province…
Pakistan honours teenage bomb hero with bravery award (via AFP)
A Pakistani teenager who sacrificed his life to stop a suicide bomber, saving the lives of hundreds of students, has been honoured with the country’s highest award for bravery. Aitzaz Hassan, 15, a student in Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province…
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The BBC reports on the wave of esteem for Aitzaz sweeping Pakistan
The top cop of Karachi, Chaudry Aslam, who took on the Taliban, was recently and finally assassinated by the TTP in usual spectacular bombing fashion. Its suspected the suicide bomber was a young recruit who was a son of some local imam. While there’s some progress in recent months by security forces and the govt in reducing the number of terrorist attacks, the future still looks bleak.
Hangu has been a flashpoint for all types of sectarian and terrorist violence for years. Hangu has been wrecked by the presence of foreign, such as the Haqqanis, and local Sunni/Salafi/Wahhabi/Deoband extremist militants, which our security establishment dismissed earlier as a ‘tribal issue’, downplaying the sectarian flashpoint and presence of the Haqqanis whom they protect/favour, when in truth its been an invasion of the Taliban and a good number of brainwashed Bangash Sunni tribesmen joined them, committing attacks on their own Shia Bangash tribe members, who took refuge from the mostly Shia Turi tribe who opposed the Taliban, themselves being strangulated by their offensives, but when they fought back and had the Taliban on the ropes, they were eventually sabotaged by the Pak army and forced into a peace deal, chief among them the Afghan Haqqanis.
Before Aitzaz Hassan’s sacrifice, Hangu only received attention recently, but only in regards to protesting against the Haqqanis being targeted and killed in a drone strike. There was a great outcry by certain religious and political groups about that attack, literally going as far as registering cases, but no such outcry or registration was seen against the myriad of terrorist attacks earlier on the residents or against the extremists, including the Haqqanis, roaming around.
Unlikely anyone’s going to step up to the plate and stop the murderous ideology of the militants, for whom some politicians want to open an embassy for. Folks will praise the young heroic martyr, deservedly so, as he saved countless of children at his school, but really there have been too many Pakistani children who already have been targeted victims or martyred before and the lack of seriousness by the leadership, if not population collectively, in tackling the violent radicalism continues.