September 24, 2007	Monday	Ramazan 11, 1428

ISLAMABAD had the image of being the safest city in Pakistan until the bloody showdown between the religious militants and the security forces in July, and the retaliatory suicide attacks that followed, turned the federal capital into a potentially unsafe, if not a dangerous, place. Political agitation by the opposition over the judicial and constitutional crises which arose in the meantime heightened the unease of the citizens.

And yet, amid all the increased craving and need for more security, the federal capital has been without a police chief for almost a month. Why? Because even ambitious police officers are reluctant to pay for the sins of others.

Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmad, the last inspector general of police, was removed on August 28, supposedly on dereliction of duty in crisis situations. Three senior superintendents of police of Islamabad had suffered the same fate in similar circumstances.

In fact, in the last six years Islamabad has seen its four IG’s and five SSPs shunted out by the indignant establishment.

After all, the city is the bastion of political power and of the bureaucracy which is averse to own the questionable orders it issues to sustain the political power.

What the police force is to do when it receive an explicit or implicit order “from the above” which clashes with its duty to enforce the law and to protect the citizens’ lives and property?

“We are prevented from acting if the apparently guilty is from the elite class and punished if we hesitate to act on orders against the apparently innocent,” said a police officer who was sidelined for carrying out orders that went wary.

There is a general feeling in the police force that whenever the ill-advised orders produce ugly results the establishment finds in the force an escape goat and the axe and blame always falls on its officers.

Transfer orders come to them as humiliation rather than as mere change in the place of duty.

It was equally unjust to accuse the police of laxity when analysing political assassinations, bomb blasts, terror attacks and lapses in security.

“We depend on the assistance from the intelligence agencies to fight such crimes. If the intelligence input is bad, the outcome would be bad,” one officer said.

IG Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmad, SSP Zafar Iqbal and DSP Jamil Hashmi were removed from their position in the aftermath of the manhandling of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in March and the Lal Masjid bloodshed.

In both the situations the city police had been acting on the orders “from above” and not on its own.

But when the chips were down, the blame came to its officers while the faceless guilty sit safe in their ivory towers.

Similarly the failure to prevent Lal Masjid being turned into a fortress and a battlefield is heaped at the doorstep of the police and not the government and the intelligence agencies whose job it was to keep an eye on the Lal Masjid brigade.

“No one can challenge government’s writ unless abetted by some powerful element sitting in the government but working against the government,” goes the popular logic.