Government’s vanishing act on Easter Sunday

Islamabad diary

There was no security whatsoever around the ill-fated Lahore park where a suicide bomber ignited his deadly cargo. And no semblance of authority was to be seen when Qadri protesters who had just participated in his chehlum, 40th day of mourning, decided to march on Islamabad. They attacked what came in their way and there was no one to stop them.

Don’t we ritually mouth the sentiment that we are in a state of war? If this means anything shouldn’t the Punjab government, which covers half the country and is usually ever-ready to blow its trumpet over real and often imaginary achievements, be under some obligation to anticipate things and look to better security in Lahore?

When the chief minister travels, when the PM travels, the security has to be seen to be believed. But for the holiday revellers at the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park there was not a thousandth part of that security which rulers here take for granted.

Agreed, every place cannot be defended and a determined suicide bomber, death tied to his waist, is hard to stop. But on a public holiday shouldn’t there be some security plan for places such as parks where a rush of people is expected?

The law and order failure in Islamabad was more striking. In Lahore of course there was no prior warning of the suicide bomber. But the Qadri chehlum in Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, was a known affair. And Islamabad is some distance away. When it was announced that the crowd had decided to march towards the capital, there was enough time for pre-emptive measures…provided leadership had come from some quarter.

But there was no plan and no preparations…at least none visible. And no one seemed to be in charge. The usually voluble and long-winded interior minister who has made a specialty of addressing press conferences on Sundays, when the news cycle is slow and newsmen lap up whatever that comes, was totally absent from the scene throughout the day and into the night.

This was the second time in three years that the capital was being assaulted and the so-called Red Zone breached. The first time was during the famous dharnas of Imran Khan and the cleric of many faces, Allama Tahirul Qadri. In repeated encounters the latter’s followers had made the doughty fighters of the Islamabad Police take to their heels – scenes captured on television that would add spice to any Hollywood thriller.

Now it was happening again, a few thousand enraged clerics armed with nothing more than sticks pushing back the police and reaching D Chowk, Islamabad’s Place de la Bastille made famous by the capitulations of the Islamabad administration.

Before the dharnas, let us not forget, a bemused nation watched the spectacle of that lone gunman, Sikander, holding off the entire capital administration, including the police, for hours on end, the whole thing shown on TV.

The field marshal in overall charge of the police force is the interior minister, often dubbed – without a shade of humour – by cloying newsmen as the country’s ‘top security czar’. On Sunday even as metro stations, and truck containers set up as roadblocks, were being torched and protesters were closing in on Parliament House, the czar was nowhere to be found.

And then we saw on our TV screens army contingents arriving in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Lahore, and a bit later the ISPR head, Gen Bajwa, tweeted that the army had been called in by the civil administration to restore peace in Islamabad. The question I am sure many people would have asked as these events unfolded: if the army is the answer to everything of what use to anyone is the civil structure?

It wasn’t always like this. Benazir Bhutto in 1988 headed a weak government not trusted by the then president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and lacking the unqualified support of what we call the ‘establishment’. Yet when a mob of clerics and seminary students took out a rally in what we quaintly call the Blue Area to protest Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’, the police had no hesitation in stopping them, going to the extent of opening fire , resulting in the deaths of five protesters. By evening calm had been restored. And no one thought of calling in the army. The interior minister then was Aitzaz Ahsan.

Some of us would remember the police strike in Punjab in 1972 soon after the PPP had come to power. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto asked the then army chief, Lt-Gen Gul Hasan, for help but he said there were no troops to spare. The Punjab government headed by then governor Ghulam Mustafa Khar was thus left to its own devices.

Khar addressed a public meeting at Mochi Gate and rolling up his sleeves said that if the striking policemen did not return to work he would sack all of them and call upon workers of the PPP to man police stations across the province. By next day every striking policeman was back on duty.

By mid-1995 in Benazir Bhutto’s second government, MQM-led terrorism was at its height in Karachi, parts of the city turning into no-go areas for the police force, and in the MQM-dominated localities thanas shutting their gates as evening fell.

Maj Gen Naseerullah Babur, the interior minister, ordered a crackdown and gave a free hand to the Karachi police commanded by DIG Shoaib Suddle. The same Rao Anwar who is SSP Malir nowadays, and who has perfected his own style of policing, was SHO Thana Airport. In a series of ‘encounters’ such feared names as Farooq Dada, Naeem Sherri and many more, were gunned down. The MQM’s back was broken.

It’s another matter that President Farooq Leghari betrayed both his party and his benefactress and dismissed her government. Otherwise the denouement of the MQM story we are seeing now would have happened then.

During that period when Naseerullah Babar – a decorated veteran, Sitara-e-Juraat and Bar – would visit Karachi he would move around without an escort, his cane, which was always with him, his only weapon.

Today what we have would be a comedy if its import weren’t so serious. The interior ministry, when Pakistan is supposed to be in a state of war, has become a joke, its head good at talking, that too at length, and addressing press conferences. But any crisis, minor or major, hits Islamabad and the entire structure of authority under him collapses.

Nawaz Sharif is a lucky man, the luckiest politician in Pakistan’s history. He is lucky to have Raheel Sharif as chief of the army, the best c-in-c Pakistan has ever had. He has taken the fight to the Taliban and the terrorists and turned things around in Karachi. The civilian government has had nothing to do with these events but it has benefited, as any government would have, from the improved security situation.

If the army had not taken the bit between its teeth and started Operation Zarb-e-Azb, Pakistan would have been at the mercy of the TTP and North Waziristan would have continued to function as an independent emirate. And Pakistan would have been a candidate to become another Iraq or Syria.

It is easily said that this is the army’s duty. Fine, although armies have also been known to lay down their arms. But what’s the duty of political leaders? Apart from looking after their business interests, aren’t they also expected to show some leadership and capacity?

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com