Pakistani Americans hold vigil for students killed by Taliban attack

On the 17th of December, hundreds of people, mostly Pakistani-Americans, gathered in Dupont Circle to remember 141 people, mostly young students, killed in the Dec 16 Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar. There was a call for solidarity with this vigil on the DC Ferguson Twitter feed and no march that would have conflicted with it.

The brutal Dec 16th massacre in which one teacher was burned alive and well over 100 students gunned down in class has earned the condemnation of groups across the political spectrum. Even the neighboring Afghan Taliban has condemned the attack, no doubt not wanting to share the coming political and possibly military fate of the Pakistani Taliban. This may have been the worst school shooting incident in all recorded history.

The school was run by the Pakistani military and a Taliban spokesman told the BBC it was retaliation for attacks on the Taliban by the Pakistani military. Of course, few seem to accept this excuse, as the Taliban targetted teenage students and teachers, not soldiers and sure as hell not soldiers and politicians who give the orders.

There will be those in the US who cite this incident to call for more US intervention in Pakistan, of which few will mention that it was US intervention in Afghanistan during the 1980's that made the existance of the Taliban possible. At any rate I suspect the Pakistani Taliban will not enjoy the response they get from Pakistan's own military to this attack, nor the loss of popular support without which no insurgency can survive.