The images Tuesday from Pakistan of wounded children being carried from a school and parents grieving horrified Dr. Muhammad Abbasi, a Rockdale County physician.
Abbasi, the father of two children, said he understands the pain those Pakistani families are going through right now.
“My gut reaction is that I am amazed and saddened,” said Abbasi, who was born in the coastal city of Karachi, and moved to the United States in 1994. “My heart is broken for these kids.”
Like many other metro Atlantans, he said the brazen attack on the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar was especially numbing because it targeted innocent children. At last count, more than 140 people, mostly children, were killed.
It is one of the worst school attacks in recent memory. In 2004, Chechen separatists stormed a school in the Russian city of Beslan resulting in the deaths of more than 300 people, most of them children.
Abbasi’s comments were echoed throughout metro Atlanta’s large Pakistani-American community, many of whom still have close family ties in the South Asian nation.
Omer Iqbal, 34, an IT professoinal who lives in Sandy Springs, called it “nonsensical.” He was born and raised in Atlanta, but his parents were born in Pakistan.
“It’s very hard to comprehend how anybody can go after innocent little children and do this kind of evil act,” he said. “It kind of leaves you speechless.”
While recent news has been filled with other violent acts, this one “hurt real bad just because it was innocent children and it it closer to home.”
The attack, in which attackers scaled a wall surrounding the school, is a “disgrace,” said Farooq Soomro, who works as an IT project and program manager and was born in Larkana. “It’s so sad. About a hundred families are impacted by this (deaths) and hundreds more are suffering. The group that claims responsibility deserve the worst punishment. They should find them and put them behind bars.”
Since the incident happened, he has been in contact with relatives back home who are very emotional and upset.
He said there will likely be efforts to somehow help the families but also “strong condemnation” against the culprits - the Pakistani Taliban or Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan - and their sympathizers.
“All Muslims are totally against this and they should be,” he said. “Everybody should step up and look around to see who who the sympathizers are and not give a single penny to those organizations.” And the government should deliver “an even stronger blow to their hideouts…These are desperate times.”
Pakistan’s intelligence service, in particular, has long been accused of - at the very least - turning a blind eye to militant activity within the nation’s borders. The military has largely stayed out of the tribal regions of the country. But recently, there are have been efforts to root out militants and this latest attack was likely in response.
The attack has almost certainly stirred up a “hornet’s nest. These are the children of Army personnel,” said Abbasi, the physician.
He and others said this attack, perhaps more so than others because it involved an attack on a school and the deaths of so many students, might be a game changer in how the Pakistani intelligence service and military deal with militants. “These people (Pakistani Taliban) are ruthless.”
Rather than educate young minds, he said, young males are taught hate against the West and India.
It might also push more Muslims to publicly denounce such extremists.
“There will be an increase in educated Muslims saying no, enough is enough. There are millions and millions of Muslims who condemn this.”
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