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Studying Terrorism: The Peshawar School Massacre and Why it Happened
I was thirteen years old when I returned home from school to find my mother silently weeping as she watched the news. This was not like the usual news about bombings or other terrorist attacks across the country or in the city. This felt heavier; though I did not know it at the time, the country had changed forever. Pakistan was a nation desensitized to violence and terrorism, which is why that day was shocking, it was not supposed to be, yet it was. It was a school this time, and they mostly killed students between eight and eighteen years of age. I remember the atmosphere of debilitating insecurity in the immediate aftermath of the attack; the feeling of terror brought about by the notion that they won’t just come for the adults, but they’ll come for the children specifically. The obvious motive behind the attack being in retaliation to the Pakistan Army — because they targeted an “Army Public School” — indicated a level of boldness which eroded security at the deepest levels. There was a sense of guilty relief that it wasn’t you or your friends or your teachers, but there was a creeping feeling of helplessness, as you knew that there would be no real justice and that the cycle would continue.
The 2014 Peshawar School Massacre had a significant and long-lasting impact on the Pakistani national psyche; it was a national…
