Security, fakery and fatalism

Attending a large event last Saturday in Bahawalpur, maybe a couple of thousand in attendance the majority of them schoolchildren, I noticed something. The gate didn’t beep. The security gate. The electronic portal that is supposed to pick up whether there are any suspect objects on the person walking through. It was only after having passed the gate that my beepless passage registered and I looked back. It did not beep for anybody going through. Quite possibly because it did not appear to be turned on. Or maybe just not working.

Ten minutes later and seated in the front row before the stage I watched as two men wearing police uniforms — at least it said ‘POLICE’ on the back — and one of them carrying what looked like a mine detector — made the briefest of looks under the pitch-dark stage (no torches), scanned nothing with their hi-tech kit, and wandered off. There was an enhanced police presence outside the venue but they seemed mostly engaged in traffic management. Everything passed uneventfully, the services over 25 years of a great educationist were honoured and we all went home safe and sound.

Every one of us lives with ‘security’ but my guess is that we rarely give much thought to the effectiveness or otherwise of the checks and inspections we witness or go through every day. We will be aware of variations in the level of scrutiny — I noticed last year for instance that buses bound for Peshawar run by a well-known national company subjected passengers luggage to a rummage search. All passengers. All luggage. No chances taken there. Nobody complained or objected either. Buses and passengers to Bahawalpur? A wave of the wand and a cursory pat down. No chances taken there? A lower perception of risk? Who knows…

The local airport seem to be on the ball. I know most of the staff at least by sight including the security detail and I, along with everybody else, get a thorough checking over including a physical whenever I travel, which may be 15 times a year. They really are taking no chances and rightly so. Cars and pickups get a good seeing-to as well, and I recently asked why they did not have one of those little handheld ‘bomb sniffers’ that you see used at the nation’s busiest airports. ‘They are fake Mr Chris, and we have never used them.’ Which is interesting to say the least.

If one of the smallest and least-busy airports in the country does not use these magic wands how come I see them at Islamabad and Karachi to name but two? These so-called ‘bomb sniffers’ were exposed as fraudulent years ago and its ‘inventor’ Jim McCormick jailed in the UK. Jailed he may have been but countries around the world had bought into his fakery making him millions in the process — and at the same time exposing as many millions to elevated risk as security agencies at state level used these toys in the belief that they would spot bombs or explosives. I seem to recall that Pakistan actually manufactures a local copy but correct me if I am wrong.

Other countries have belatedly seen the error of their ways and discontinued use of the toy scanner, reverting to the Mk1 Eyeball and sniffer dogs that really do detect suspicious objects and substances. If ‘the authorities’ know that the fakes are fake then so presumably do the bombers, and the argument that they act as a deterrent drops like a stone. It is not as if this con is hiding under a stone somewhere, it is well-known widely publicised and out in the open for years.

Despite this it is used to perpetuate the security fantasy wherever it is used countrywide. As are all those security gates that are mysteriously silent. They are the security equivalent of comfort eating. We all feel better despite the fact that we are exposing ourselves to potential mortal danger. There is no challenge, no national outcry at being duped into a baseless sense of wellbeing, we just shrug, smile and walk through those silent portals just as, one day, so could the bomber that blows us to pieces seconds later.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 1^st, 2016.

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