There is a place in Pakistan, perched on the edge of the map and the edge of humanity’s conscience, called Parachinar. Here, in the mountains of Kurram, 42 Shia Muslims were ambushed and slaughtered last week as they travelled under the illusion of state protection. Among the dead were seven women and a nine-year-old girl. Their crime? Belonging to a minority in a country that treats them as disposable.
Aga Syed Amin Musvi
There is a place in Pakistan, perched on the edge of the map and the edge of humanity’s conscience, called Parachinar. Here, in the mountains of Kurram, 42 Shia Muslims were ambushed and slaughtered last week as they travelled under the illusion of state protection. Among the dead were seven women and a nine-year-old girl. Their crime? Belonging to a minority in a country that treats them as disposable.
The massacre Is not a bolt from the blue. It is a pattern, a script repeated so often that the ink is worn thin. Parachinar is a graveyard of unkept promises, of hollow condemnations by those who claim to govern but do not protect. It is a place where the state pretends to be blind while militants sharpen their knives in broad daylight.
And yet, as the blood of the innocent seeps into the soil, the world looks the other way, preoccupied with its latest obsession: artificial intelligence. In this glittering spectacle of progress, who cares for the human lives crushed beneath its weight?
A Nation at War with Itself
Parachinar is not merely a tragedy; it is a question mark scrawled across the face of Pakistan’s identity. A nation that markets itself as the fortress of Islam has become a butcher’s shop, where sectarian hatred is sold wholesale. The state offers security escorts that serve as mirages, law enforcement that protects no one, and inquiries that dissolve into silence.
It Is not neglect—it is complicity. A genocide scripted in slow motion, carried out not with dramatic flair but with the quiet efficiency of indifference.
In Arundhati Roy’s words, the state “pretends to be the victim when it is the oppressor.” In Parachinar, Pakistan wields the language of peace while allowing
the machinery of violence to operate unhindered. This is not failure; it is policy.
The Farce of Progress
While the mountains of Kurram are drenched in blood, Pakistan’s leaders busy themselves with the language of progress. Artificial intelligence, economic reforms, the promise of a modern nation—they are rehearsing their lines for an audience that doesn’t know better.
But what does progress mean in a place like Parachinar? What is the value of algorithms in a nation that cannot value human life? This is not progress—it is performance. A magic trick to divert the world’s gaze from the rot within.
The world, too, plays its part. Global leaders, preoccupied with ethical guidelines for AI, have no time to address the ethical void in Kurram. They speak of a future powered by technology while ignoring a present mired in blood.
A Stage for Hypocrisy
Parachinar is not just a Pakistani wound; it is a global shame. The silence of the international community is more chilling than the violence itself. It is a quiet endorsement of a worldview where some lives are expendable, where minorities are erased not just physically but from the global narrative.
Arundhati Roy once wrote, “There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” In Parachinar, the Shia community is both.
The Choice Before Us
The massacre in Parachinar is a test. A test of Pakistan’s ability to confront its demons, and of the world’s willingness to hold it accountable. But let us not be naïve. Pakistan’s rulers will issue more empty statements. The international community will nod solemnly and move on. And Parachinar will bleed again.
But what if this time, we do not look away? What if the world’s obsession with artificial intelligence includes the intelligence to act humanely? Progress is not measured by algorithms or economic growth; it is measured by the dignity we afford to human life.
Until then, Parachinar will remain a place that asks, quietly but insistently: How many lives will it take for the world to listen? How much blood must flow before we stop calling this progress?
