| August 19, 2003 | Tuesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 20, 1424 |
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Another doctor’s murder
Sufis and politicians
IT is a miracle that the bomb blasts which ripped off two separate portions of the national rail network this past weekend did not result in damage to any trains. If a train had derailed, the casualty figure could have been high. The normally tightly packed Tezgam, running between Karachi and Rawalpindi, had passed the site of one of the explosions in Nawabshah minutes before the blast. According to reports, the noise from the explosions alerted several passersby, including policemen, who dashed to the tracks and managed to flag down several trains. However fortunate the escape, the explosions were a clear act of sabotage and a warning to the federal government to more closely guard the country’s lines of communications.
Train tracks in most places are unguarded and thus present an easy target for saboteurs intending to inflict large-scale destruction. Every train accident makes big news, and that is exactly what saboteurs want. The task before the Pakistan Railways is obvious. It must redouble its efforts to guard and patrol the more vulnerable sections of the track, especially in parts of upper Sindh, given that the area has a history of such incidents. Pilot trolleys or bogeys must be used with greater frequency, especially where passenger trains are concerned, to check the ‘train-worthiness’ of the track and prevent possible sabotage. This might increase the PR’s operating costs, but a 10 per cent rise in revenue this year, which it has recently announced, should be able to finance that. In any case, incurring this extra cost makes eminent sense because it will lead to many lives being saved.
But the PR’s job is limited in scope in the sense that it can only seek to protect its tracks and rolling stock. It is the task of our intelligence agencies to unearth people and organizations bent upon carrying out acts of terrorism. Which groups could possibly be behind such attempts at sabotage? What precisely do they intend to gain out of the murder and mayhem they wish to cause? Who are their leaders? Where do they get their arms from, who finances them and, crucially, what motivates them to carry out such terrorist deeds? These are all questions that cry out for an answer. A good beginning could be made if the perpetrators of the weekend’s incidents were caught. Their interrogation could provide the authorities with a motive for the blasts and perhaps also clues to the existence of other elements planning similar activities. If the assessment of a London-based research centre, reported on Monday, is correct that Pakistan is third among countries most likely to be the target of a terrorist attack in the next three months, the need for vigilance increases greatly. The country’s gas pipelines have also suffered unexplained attacks, and that rail lines have now been hit should set several alarm bells ringing.
THE gunning down of a Shia doctor in Karachi on Saturday brings the number of doctor victims of sectarianism to 70 in this city over the last decade. No less than 195 cases of sectarian assaults have been reported from Karachi alone over the same period — that number is much higher on a countrywide basis. Saturday’s killing spree actually involved two people: the doctor in question and an elderly shopkeeper, who reportedly refused to shut down his shop as a mark of protest over the doctor’s killing. That the latter killing took place under the very eyes of the police and the Rangers, who had set up a check post in the same building, goes to show the trademark apathy with which the law enforcement agencies treat incidents of sectarian violence. The admission by the Sindh inspector-general of police that these were sectarian murders may be a damn right assessment for once, but leaves one wondering as to what the authorities have done to contain the menace so far.
Sunday saw the continuation of street violence, as those attending the doctor’s funeral torched cars, petrol stations, restaurants and marriage halls. One cannot condone such violence even though one recognizes that the spontaneous acts of lawlessness were touched off by the people’s anger over the authorities’ failure to put an end to the scourge of sectarianism. The government’s banning of a number of sectarian organizations does not mean that these have ceased to exist. Their structure remains intact and their ability to surface now and then and strike remains unimpaired. The situation serves to highlight the incompetence of the intelligence agencies and their failure to identify the masterminds behind these diabolical acts; and to track down their sources of funds and arms. The sectarian terrorists have done enormous harm to Pakistan’s image and contributed in no small measure to the decline of civil society. It is this infrastructure of sectarian madness that must be dismantled and those responsible for it crushed with all the might of the state. The people of Pakistan would welcome any measures, howsoever stringent, the government might adopt to root out the menace of sectarianism.
IF only Baba Bulleh Shah had known his urs would become an occasion to be officially celebrated by the Punjab government, he would not have chosen Kasur as his final resting place. The announcement by the auqaf department that the 18th-century sufi poet’s urs celebrations next week would be attended by Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi, along with other ministers, must have made Bulleh Shah turn in his grave. He despised all false prestige and hated being in the limelight. His last wish: Chal Bulleha, chal oathe chalye jithe saare annhe; Na koi saadi zaat pachhane, na koi sannun manne (Bulleh, go find a place where all are blind; Let no one know your cast, let none honour you). Little did the great poet know that there would come a day when a foreign minister — who is otherwise quite ‘foreign’ to Kasur — would come here as the prodigal son making his urs the official excuse to visit his ancestral town.
The culture of government officials, ministers and prime ministers ‘patronizing’ popular patron saints, most of whom despised all officialdom, pomp and ceremony, has been a growing phenomenon since the 1970s when Mr Bhutto started laying chadors and wreaths at the sufis’ shrines. It has since then become customary for the chief executives and ministers to do the same. There is an inherent paradox in the whole affair. The public makes a beeline for the sufis’ shrines with their wish lists, often containing items that politicians and leaders have failed to deliver. The politicians, who otherwise shun their voters, have now made these shrines a rendezvous for their public appearances. In doing so, they miss the obvious point: if an average Pakistani is so grateful for the good deeds the sufis did centuries ago, would they not honour their elected leaders if they made even a small difference to their lives today? The moral of the story: hero worship may be ingrained in us as a people, but the honour that comes with it has to be earned.