Dangerous high drama kept the federal capital hostage for more than five hours on Thursday, as the clueless Islamabad police and other law enforcement agencies fiddled around. The trial finally came to an end when a fearless former lawmaker jumped into the scene. Inexplicable, scandalous and shocking are much milder words to describe the security establishment’s failure in detecting a virtual lunatic, laced with sophisticated weapons at the point of entry into Islamabad that has pickets at every corner, and later showing helplessness in taking him on as he demanded the destruction of democracy and imposition o Sharia.
And with the TV channels focused, all the while, on the non-entity Sikandar, stepping out of his car, sauntering around, firing shots and brandishing his weapons at will, all of our pretentious claims of foolproof security in capital’s red zone, were badly exposed. We, as a nation, the leadership and the security agencies, became a rightful butt of mirth and derision for the whole world that, not for nothing, singles out Pakistan as terrorists’ haven and the most dangerous place.
Strangely, though the Prime Minister was in town at the time, he woke up a day later to demand how the police allowed a civilian to approach the villain of the piece, order an inquiry into the entire affair and urgent submission of a report to him. Mr Zamurad Khan, who so bravely enacted the final act, elicits high words of praise from across the board, irrespective of party allegiance. His was a patriotic, well-timed act; for he did what the police should have done much earlier. SSP Operations Dr Rizwan, who in vain tried to talk Sikandar into surrendering, was ultimately upstaged by Zamurd Khan.
PTI leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi or PPP’s Naveed Qamar could not be faulted for calling the government “a leaderless team” and an outright failure. Naveed Qamar rightly bemoaned that neither the Interior Minister nor any other Minister was present in the National Assembly when the opposition wanted to debate the outrageous event on Friday and the Speaker suddenly adjourned the House to prevent any discussion to take place.
The event is a forceful reminder to the government to speed up the process of finalising its national security strategy. There is no time to lose; for death and destruction seems to be stalking the nation at every corner.