The Model Town tragedy was a blatant misuse of state power to suppress or terrorize unarmed political opponents. The fact that innocent women were shot in the face exemplified police brutality of the level that is unprecedented in our country’s history, even under military dictatorship.
The manner in which old bearded men and young workers including women in hijab; all workers of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT)/ Minhaj ul Quran (MUQ), were dragged or beaten up on the streets was reminiscent of street battles in war zones.
Even more alarming was the ‘charge of the Gullu brigade’ that comprised hundreds of armed policemen. It presented a comic scene with a ‘danda’ brandishing villain Gullu Butt, a local notorious hooligan and apparently a police tout/ informer leading the assault on innocent civilians. What started as an unbelievable comedy ended up in horrific tragedy with an increasing count of fatalities and the injured taken to hospitals.
Pakistanis wonder whether it was really a police officer or Gullu Butt the thug who was in command of the ‘Gullu’ brigade. Who gave the orders to fire at unarmed citizens? Why were rubber bullets or water cannons not used to disperse angry protestors? Why were the police silent spectators as Gullu Butt went on a rampage, damaging private vehicles parked in the area? Were criminals in police uniform also unleashed to terrorize innocent civilians?
The army, too, must have been taken aback with operation ‘Zarb-e-Gullu’ which became an instant household name. At a time when the army was gearing up internal security in major towns and cities in coordination with civilian administration to pre-empt possible militants’ backlash to its Zarb-e-Azab in North Waziristan, the disproportionate use of force in Model Town only served to degrade the security environment in Lahore. The terrorists too, took full advantage of the prevailing chaos, and targeted MQM’s female MNA in Lahore the following day.
Instead of focusing on the critical need to foster national unity and all around support for the newly launched Zarb-e-Azab, the nation’s and the electronic media’s attention remained steadfastly on Zarb-e Gullu and its aftermath for many days, ending with Dr Qadri’s dramatic return to Al Qadria, his Model Town residence.
Zarb -e- Gullu exposed a glaring weakness of governance in the Punjab. In the absence of a full time provincial home minister, there was a vaccum of central authority responsible to monitor law and order crises. If the Chief Minister of the Punjab was holding the additional portfolio of Home Minister, then should he not accept complete responsibility for all the bloody mayhem? It is difficult to believe that an alert and dynamic provincial Chief Executive like Shahbaz Sharif, who has a reputation for micro managing Punjab’s affairs, was simply unaware of the bloody battles being fought in his immediate neighborhood.
If the Model Town madness is condemnable, what followed in Rawalpindi/Islamabad that resulted in injuries to over 100 policemen and ‘laathi’ armed PAT/MUQ/ PML-Q workers before the arrival of Dr Tahir ul Qadri too cannot be condoned. Better sense prevailed, for had the Rawalpindi police been armed with automatic weapons, a repeat of the Lahore tragedy would not have been outside the scope of possibility.
But why such panic from a government that enjoys a heavy political mandate? Why stop people from welcoming or sighting their revered leader from an airport’s outer perimeter, when Islamabad’s Benazir International Airport was well guarded?
Had the Emirates flight not been diverted to Lahore, Dr Tahir ul Qadri’s protest ‘dharna’ in the aircraft could have been averted. At the heels of the Karachi Airport tragedy, incidents like the forced grounding of the Emirates airliner as well as the firing on the PIA airbus during landing at Peshawar’s Bacha Khan International Airport, all dealt a severe blow to Pakistan’s image as a safe destination for foreign airlines.
While Dr Qadri’s sense of insecurity and lack of confidence in the Punjab police in seemed justified, his demand for meeting with the Lahore Corps commander or senior military officers during the aircraft sit in was out of place in a democratic environment. Instead of embarrassing the army by seeking the military’s escort, Dr Qadri should have at best, asked for security cover from the airport to Al Qadria by the Punjab Rangers which is a federal paramilitary force headed by army officers.
Under growing public pressure and calls for his resignation, Shahbaz Sharif sacked both his most trusted and loyal law minister and his principal secretary. But they were only made scapegoats to pacify an angry nation. A single bench judicial commission of the Lahore High Court and a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) comprising experts of the elite civil/ military intelligence agencies are probing into all aspects of the Model Town tragedy. Going by history, the nation is well assured that the real perpetrators and masterminds will escape justice. Pakistanis fully understand that their leadership has always demonstrated a lack of political will to implement recommendations of such commissions, committees and JITs that are eventually consigned to the litter of history.
It is a known fact that Dr. Tahir ul Qadri, like other Pakistani leaders, faces serious militant threats, especially from the Tehreek-e-Taliban, against whom he issued an international fatwa a few years ago. Pakistanis therefore question the wisdom behind the Punjab government’s untimely and unwarranted use of force to demolish security barriers around MUQ headquarters, only to be re-erected as a result of the Punjab Governor’s intervention.
The Model Town trauma added another stigma to our struggling democracy. As long as characters like Gullu Butt continue to be patronized by political parties and law enforcing agencies, more and more ‘Gullus’ will keep playing their ‘noble’ role of harassing and traumatizing our society. While victims and their families have to endure unending pain from wounds inflicted by ‘Zarb-e-Gullu’, the PML-N, too, will continue to be haunted by the living ghost of Gullu Butt for a long time to come.
The writer is a retired Brigadier and political/ defence analyst.
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