By Kamran Rehmat/Doha

Nothing, absolutely nothing, in life prepares you for the kind of hell unleashed in a Peshawar school last Tuesday. It has turned every thinking, feeling human being into a parent overnight. The reality has still not sunk in; a constant struggle between overcoming shock, and accepting the eventuality that comes with grief.

My wife woke up from a nightmare in the wee hours of the day, startled as if she had seen an apparition. She wouldn’t divulge the haunting dream until news of the tragedy of our lives began piercing the heart.

The only difference is while she had seen our children in the dream, the children happened to be in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the north.

We have wept, lost sleep, struggled to eat and largely been unable to do the things we normally do since then. We have tried to shield the kids as much as we can from knowing what really happened, but there’s such a deep connect to the tragedy on a national scale, the like of which we have never experienced, that one has not come across a single soul able to shake it off or keep composed for long.

The haunting images of incredibly beautiful children - set against blood-drenched school uniforms, auditorium, classroom walls and pathways even after all the calibrated censorship of flesh - have unleashed a horror so penetrating it has jangled the nerves.

It seems like Pakistan is teetering on the edge with TV anchors, reporters and guests repeatedly breaking down during live transmissions, trying to fathom the depth of depravity.

The stories of those who died and those who survived are becoming legion — from a student who lied to his mother on a mobile even as death stalked him that he was fine when, in fact, he had a bullet in his chest; and another who survived because he overslept and couldn’t go to school only to learn his entire class had been wiped out; to a pupil, who played dead, by stuffing his tie in his mouth even with blood flowing from both his bullet-riddled legs; and a student who begged his mother in the morning he didn’t want to go, but did anyway on her insistence (without breakfast because he was late) only to return home in a coffin; from teachers, who got in the way of the rampaging Taliban knowing they would be killed only to give a few more seconds to their students, who they motioned, to escape; or, as in the case of one teacher, who simply forgot her own children in the adjoining class because she only had a mind to protect the ones in hers; to two bloodied students, who chose to turn back their heels to rescue friends lying half-dead, but themselves got killed; it has been an astounding gamut of human spirit that however, only breaks your heart at the end.

These are just a few stories and even more are coming out to sap away at our broken spirits. Even as the nation mourns her children who paid with their lives because the state failed them, the focus will inevitably, turn to those who survived and how they, their families and, those of us, who still have to send their children back to school, will contend now that the fallout is imminent.

Having said that, Pakistan has arrived at a seminal moment in history. The national fury is at a boiling point. It has forced the power stakeholders to make an about-turn: a teary-eyed opposition demagogue Imran Khan suddenly wrapped up his four-month-old street protest in a widely acclaimed unity of purpose; Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on capital punishment and his government has decided to set up special military courts to try terrorists; Army Chief General Raheel Sharif dashed to Afghanistan and privately, put Kabul on notice to co-operate by not providing sanctuary to retreating militants.

General Raheel also signed the death warrants of six convicted terrorists, leading to the execution since Friday night of six convicts involved in attacks on the military headquarters in Rawalpindi and General Pervez Musharraf. More executions will follow as the army operation intensifies in the country’s northern badlands.

However, the sceptic in some of us would wait. Operations, after all, have been conducted before as well, with ambiguity in targeting the enemy. Prime Minister Sharif however, vowed that there’s going to be no distinction between the so-called “good” and “bad” Taliban this time, to the extent the last one is eliminated.

The feel-good vibes at the moment lie in the never-before-seen national consensus to get the murderers. Retaining that policy - by leveraging the national sentiment - however, will be the key.

Power wielders will have to provide an institutional mechanism, not just capitalise on the current national mood, to turn the tables. The parliament will have to move swiftly to amend/make laws to deal effectively with militancy - a national draft is expected this week; also paramount is the need to actively engage the public by reframing the national narrative, and pertinently, reclaim space grabbed by the militants;  and for the army to expand the operation to get the enemy.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have slammed the decision to hang convicted terrorists, which is an expected reaction from global bodies only responding to their brief. However, the HRW, in particular, has used highly provocative language while staying mum on what the alternative would be. The HRW appears not to have the first idea what Pakistan - a country that has rendered the biggest sacrifices, including the loss of more than 60,000 lives, in a self-styled war-on-terror imposed on it - is up against.

The massacre of schoolchildren is a direct outcome of Pakistan fronting the global war against the vilest breed of terrorism stalking the land.

While executions of convicted terrorist murderers by themselves may not resolve everything, especially when these monsters are willing to blow themselves up and kill children, you’ve got to put faith back in the old rule of law: the convict has to pay the price for perpetrating evil. No society can function without a system that ensures justice.

♦ The writer is Features Editor.