A great deal has already been written about the armed standoff in Islamabad, but all have completely missed the main point: i.e. hats off to the media and Mr Zamurad Khan for ensuring that the terrorist was apprehended. Instead the latter is being called to task and the former being criticised for his heroism, in which he risked his life. Even the security forces should not be blamed for their inaction, as they were only following orders. The frustration they were feeling is evident because as soon as they saw a pretext they brought down the terrorist. For those who think that the incident would have resolved itself peacefully and the media and the MNA have behaved irresponsibly, well, of course in retrospect there is the possibility that might have been proved correct, but it was too risky a chance to take. There are too many precedents of similar incidents when a malefactor is apparently hopelessly surrounded in a public place by hundreds of policemen, and in the end he manages to get away mysteriously.
I am reminded of three such incidents in the 1990s. In one, over 140 policemen surrounded some armed men on the GT road near Gujranwala, who were inadvertently discovered when their car was stopped for a traffic violation. There was a shootout and the miscreants got away during the night. Then there was another incident when the notorious dacoit Tipu (later killed in a police encounter) was discovered to be hiding in a house in a cantonment area. Again, hundreds of policemen surrounded the house; one brave DSP tried to enter the dacoit’s room through a window. The dacoit who had a collection of antique weapons apart from modern guns shot him with a crossbow. Again, the dacoit escaped the ‘impregnable’ cordon. Another time a ‘history-sheeter’ who was the brother of a renowned leader of a religious party was surrounded in his hideout by many contingents of the police; however, the wanted man managed to escape somehow. There are innumerable other incidents like these, which occur especially when there are certain influential elements involved.
From the beginning, the incident in Islamabad showed signs of something happening behind the scenes. There seemed to be a move to portray the gunman as a ‘lone wolf’, a drug addict and a drunkard merely acting irrationally. The gunman was busy telephoning, perhaps asking his collaborators to rescue him, and perhaps the collaborators could have been concerned that his mission should not be discovered, so given time, and if the media had not been watching, then later at night they might have been able to do something. Anyway, the instructions of not to shoot might or might not have been given for humanitarian reasons, but they were certainly wrong. Also, there were other more humane ways of neutralisng the gunman; why were they not implemented? The very fact that Sikandar was able to penetrate so deep into the capital carrying arms despite security precautions probably shows he had influential backing, rather than laxity at checkpoints. The fact is that we are divided as a nation on the question of terrorists, mainly because they espouse the cause of religion. Huge funds pour in from abroad, mainly from the Middle East, the UK and also Spain, among other nations. And, of course, they have other sources of funding and many people at all levels backing them. That is why there is the question of consensus and though our security forces are becoming more and more committed to eliminate these threats, there is still a body of opinion and political and other powerful elements supporting these groups.
Even after the event, there were efforts to obfuscate the real picture. There was a pathetic attempt to say that the gunman was a bodyguard of Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and/or Asif Zardari. The media was castigated for playing up the event, so much so that the Chief Justice of Pakistan has taken suo motu notice of the role of the media, not the other aspects of the case, mind you. However, who knows what might have happened had these two acted more ‘responsibly’. The common man saw the whole incident for himself and now the cat is out of the bag. Investigations have shown that the gunman was affiliated with a banned terrorist organisation and definitely on some mission. In the light of these circumstances it seems that efforts by some quarters of criticising the media shows that in reality they are unhappy that the truth is out. Thus, the tragedy is that instead of lauding the heroes of that day, some people are trying to criticise them. No wonder our country is plagued by so many problems.
In closing, I would like to point out to our extremist religious compatriots that there are no less than four verses in the Holy Quran saying that we should see signs of the workings of the Almighty in events around us. Thus this gives us food for thought when we see how Malala Yousafzai survived a terrorist’s bullets. And in this case it was practically a miracle that a gun that had been firing so profusely before should suddenly get jammed when Sikandar tried to shoot Zamurad at point blank range. I ask our religious minded friends and enemies to please think about this.
The writer is a published author and he can be reached at [email protected]