Pakistan is a nuclear power that often finds its capital under siege. Whether the protest is by disaffected politicians or religious hardliners out to have their way, the residents of Rawalpindi and Islamabad are the ones mostly at the receiving end. Given the disruption to their lives, the traffic mess, food shortages and occasional violence, it’s amazing that residents almost never come out with a protest of their own.
For almost a fortnight now, the capital has been in chaos. The main artery connecting Rawalpindi with Islamabad – the Faizabad Interchange – remained blocked by followers of a newly-minted, hardcore religious party, until yesterday. This has created a huge bottleneck on other entry-exit points to Islamabad. Roughly half million vehicles enter Islamabad daily, many of them carrying Rawalpindi people to work or study in Islamabad. Now with the blockade, a typically one-hour commute takes more than three hours to snail through.
Meanwhile, the state apparatus remained a bystander as religious zealots camped out in the middle of a highway to make themselves heard. It’s hard to tell whether the state was simply being patient or just inept. For the most part of the siege, the public remained in the dark as to what was going on.
No federal minister went on TV (or Twitter) to communicate the situation to the general public. For some reason, the TV channels couldn’t cover the misery faced by the average citizen from the start. The Interior Minister finally showed up on the airwaves last Friday. Without apologizing to the public for his administration’s abject failure to keep order in the capital, Ahsan Iqbal’s tone suggested that the state’s vacillation would go on. A security operation to clear out the Faizabad protesters was expected later that day, after the Islamabad High Court was roped in to order protesters to end the sit in. But the operation was deferred by the minister twice over the weekend, giving talks another chance.
One understands why any government in Pakistan would give kid-glove treatment to super-charged religious protests. Bloodshed can cause a wider chaos. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! But this situation is not sustainable.
Tomorrow, it will be some other religious group or political organisation making unacceptable demands while causing lengthy holdups to citizens going about their daily lives.
The situation in the capital really embarrasses Pakistan. It damages the state’s narrative of a ‘security turnaround’. It doesn’t reassure the Chinese government, which is investing big under the CPEC umbrella. Nor does it convince the Americans, who have been more bellicose lately, or the West that Pakistan has truly turned the page when it comes to extremism.
So what should happen? One, protesters must learn there are better ways and places to make themselves heard without destroying their credibility. Two, affected citizens must get rid of clan politics so they can organize and reclaim their right to free movement. And three, the state must stop engaging in selective appeasement of hardliners and instead impose a legal cost on those violating the law and order without delay. Otherwise, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” – indeed.
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