Succesful Policing

There are very few instances of successful policing in Pakistan and when it does happen it surprises us all. The entire country had braced itself for a violent and bloody 9th and 10th Muharram, in fact people had convinced themselves that something terrible was bound to happen and when nothing happened they were left quite speechless none more so than for the television channels.

Our intrepid reporters were intensely probed by the majestic and graceful anchors about the events as they unfolded; trouble was nothing much unfolded. And so our imperial anchors went on with serious vigour and continued their important ritual of reading from the auto cue

Anchor: "Mr. Reporter you've been with procession for much of the day what's the situation like"

The galant reporters, with a glazed look in his eyes, answers back

Reporter: "There are thousands of people here and if a bomb was to explode many would die, but a bomb has yet to explode and I've been standing here for 5 hours now so I'm going to help myself to some Sherbet and wait for the bomb to explode so that I can report on how a bomb exploded in the middle of thousands of people and killed many, over to you."

Anchor: "Thank you reporter"

5 minutes later

Anchor: "Mr. Reporter you've been with procession for much of the day what's the situation like"

The galant reporters, with a glazed look in his eyes, answers back...

The banal reporting highlighted the one dimensional state of Pakistani television reporting and of the country's fascination with, and hightened anticipation of, violence. The Muharam procession gathered, they marched and then they all went home to eat some Haleem, no blood or gore of the reporting kind so we had two days of torturous television. But there was plenty of blood and gore of the self inflicted kind (matham), which was carried by most channels as part of their religious, Muharram television and thus made for some wonderful afternoon viewing. Where was the probing report by our imperious journalists on the barbarism of such utterly inhumane acts? I'll leave that for another day.

Coming back to the point, the last two days were a success story for the police who successfully worked with the community and cooperated with Shia Scouts and other volunteers and at the end were extremely effective in preventing violence, hell they even managed to arrest someone before a bombing!

The trouble is, Karachi is an impossible city to police in its entirety and as I highlighted in the earlier post the rules of attacks are changing in Karachi. The Quaidabad bombing occurred at a site that Musharraf had crossed 8 hours earlier. The bombers couldn't carry out an attact at that time so they waited till it was possible to do so by which time the targets became people buying fruits and vegetables from the street market.

A post on Karachi Metroblog, the veracity of which I cannot confirm, depicts the ordeal of a guy whose car was hijacked by a suicide bomber. The bomber, with his hostage in tow, travelled around the city searching for a way to bomb the procession, when he couldn't he ditched the hostage and his car but before leaving he did impart some profound wisom on his victim "you're very unlucky, you lost your chance at shahadat" stated the would be suicide bomber!

We should applaud the law enforecement agencies for their bravery and their success at preventing bloodshed (of the unacceptable kind!)over the past two days but the idea that suicide bombings can be averted in Karachi by effective policing is questionable. These guys are itching for some action and if you prevent them from taking aim at their main target they might just reassess what their targets are, and that's a scary thought indeed.