Rob Crilly
Here are the stories that I've been reading to get a grip on what's been happening in Pakistan in the past 24 hours
The death of more than 130 people, mostly children, in an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar is the biggest death toll inflicted by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Pakistan Taliban) since it was founded in 2007. But it reflects weakness rather than strength.
Last week I wept with pride as Malala Yousafzai collected her Nobel Peace prize in Oslo, next to Kailash Satyarthi. The world stopped to listen as she gave her acceptance speech, in which she said: "It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education ...
The Afghan Taliban has released a statement, attributed to "Zabihullah Mujahid," the group's official spokesman, condemning the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan's (or Pakistani Taliban) attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar today. The statement was released on the Afghan Taliban's official Urdu website.
In Peshawar, Tuesday began with the promise of a sunny winter day. Several hundred students between the ages of ten and eighteen arrived at the Army Public School. They wore green blazers, gray trousers, and tin badges printed with the school motto: "I shall rise and shine."
They are open to negotiation after all. Some still serve as proxies of Pakistan's complex political game across the border in Afghanistan. The target, an army school, was symbolic as well as practical. The military has long been in the Taliban's cross-hairs, viewed as a sometimes secular stooge of Washington.
Continue reading the main story Many of the injured and wounded from Tuesday's attack were taken to Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital. Following the siege there were scenes of absolute chaos in some of the hospital's wards. The BBC managed to get inside the intensive-care unit and speak to some of the students who were able to describe what happened.
IT TAKES something unusually vile for the world to pay much attention to a terrorist outrage in Pakistan. Since 2007 the annual toll of murders by jihadists has never dropped below 2,000 and in 2012 and 2013 it was not far off 4,000. This year has actually seen the mayhem decline by a third.
