Pakistan: Anyone in rule?

The Frontier Post

In targeted killings, at least eight people were done in brutally in Quetta and Turbat on Monday while for Karachi the people have now stopped keeping even a count of bloodletting, so inseparable has bloodshed become to the beleaguered port city�s daily life. But is there no one in rule here? Where are the provincial administrations, whose job it is constitutionally to secure the citizens� lives and properties? And where are federal hierarchs? Aren�t they required to intervene authoritatively when a provincial administration is just slumbering, shake it up out of its stupor and make it to act; and if it doesn�t, to send it packing and set about restoring law and order to its domain? Or, have both abdicated their constitutional duty to secure the citizens? Or, has life of the citizen become dirt cheap on this land that the criminal gun has been given such a free run to wreak havoc the way it likes?
Look to any direction, and every part of the country is in the sizzling lap of lawlessness and criminality. Nowhere the people�s lives are secure and safe. Everywhere they live in the dread of thugs, murderers, kidnappers, dacoits, highwaymen, rustlers and, above all, terrorists of all hues and brands. No place is safe. Quetta has become the favourite haunt of not just target killers. Along with Balochistan interior, it has turned into a hub of booming trade in kidnappings for ransom. And if Karachi is now in the tight grip of the organised crime of underworld, the Sindh interior is being overrun systematically by red-eyed dacoits and highwaymen. And while the urban Punjab is being blighted by street crimes of every description, in the rural Punjab having the field day are rustlers, dacoits and thieves. No immune either is Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, whose Peshawar metropolis long stands largely emptied of the well-off as much for fear of the criminal gun as of the terrorist bomb. The predicament of its interior could well be imagined.
To cut the sad story short, the citizens all over the land have been thrown before the criminals and terrorists to belabour and devour up. And both are having a jolly good time in their vile trade, with both the provincial administrations and the federal hierarchy alike looking on listlessly and, astoundingly, disinterestedly. The entire state security apparatus is visibly deployed on securing the lives of the federal and provincial hierarchs. They live in fortified mansions; they work in highly-secured zones and offices; they travel on multi-million-rupee, bullet-proof limousines amid layers after layers of security escorts; and for hours all roads and connecting side arteries are kept closed to general traffic to make for their safe travelling with no concern at all about the tremendous inconvenience this causes to the public. But does this country exist for these jokers or for the 180 million people who sweat on the farms and in the factories and other workplaces to produce the national wealth on which these clowns luxuriate so fabulously without giving even a shred of security to them in return of the compliment?
But would these johnnies spare a thought to know which way are they pushing the country with their contemptible disinterest in securing the land and ensuring the safety of its denizens? Aren�t they ashamed that for worse security conditions prevalent all over the country foreigners do not send even their sports teams to play matches here and our teams have to go to foreign lands to play matches, of which we are a host? Don�t they feel disgraced that for this very reason foreign entrepreneurs dread visiting our country and instead call their Pakistani partners and business associates to Dubai and other places for meetings and parleys? And don�t they feel concerned that for these dismal security conditions not just foreign prospective investors are shunning us like plague but even our own entrepreneurs are shifting to foreign pastures, though no lesser for the crippling energy crisis that the incumbent federal hierarchy and playful provincial subedars from one to all have done nothing to overcome?
Contemptuously enough, they all are throwing mounds of the taxpayer�s precious money on cheap pork barrel to build up their vote-banks. But of what would it be if the country gets caught up irretrievably in the chaos and anarchy it is inevitably heading to because of the worsening law and order conditions? Shouldn�t they instead be spending this dole on strengthening and training the law-enforcement agencies and refurbishing their arsenals and equipments so as to enable them to take on the criminals and terrorists effectively and triumphantly? Ironically enough, they are also launching even their teenaged their sons and daughters as their heirs and heiresses and their successors in time. But where would their darling babies be on a throne if this country drowns into the black hole it is adrift to so fast because of the free run of criminal guns and terrorist bombs all over the land? If nothing else, at least in their own interest and in the long-term interest of their anointed darling successors, they must get out of their hibernation and do something to return this besieged land to security, peace and stability. The portents otherwise are too dire and too sombre.