Message from Islamabad’s Hyde Park

The area around ‘D Chowk’, off the Blue Area in the federal capital, used to provide main access to our parliament.

The area around the ‘D Chowk’, off the Blue Area in the federal capital, used to provide main access to our parliament.

This square has since the movement for an independent judiciary turned into a kind of a local ‘Hyde Park’.

Almost daily, when parliament is in session, activists gather here to chant for issues of their concern.

On Monday, it was the turn of students from Parachinar.

More than 2,000 young men from this area are studying in various colleges and universities of Islamabad.

For weeks, they had been approaching media houses to sensitise them regarding a relatively unknown humanitarian crisis, telling reporters about their families’ sufferings back home.

The idyllic Parachinar, the students claim, is completely cut off from other parts of the country. No vehicle can ply the roads leading to it and there are pockets on these roads which are in absolute control of a vicious variety of Taliban, who are presumably targeting a peculiar community with a vengeance.

When the media did not appear to be interested in projecting their cause, this group of students set up a protest camp outside the National Press Club in utter desperation.

Just minutes before assembly session started on Monday, a large group of protesters managed to reach the D Chowk. Although cordoned off far away from parliament, their shouts kept reverberating in its buildings.

No wonder, Faisal Karim Kundi had no choice but to allow Sajid Toori, a legislator from Parachinar, to agitate over the issue right in the middle of the question hour.

After elaborating upon the protesters’ cause, he walked out of the house, vowing not to return until the government cleared access to his area.

This provided Rehman Malik another opportunity for making a boastful pledge.

The interior minister felt no shame in admitting that a 65-kilometre-long stretch of road to Parachinar was not “very safe”, and beyond a certain point an area with a radius of about 15-to-20 kilometres had turned into a ‘no-go’ area for the state and average citizens.

He, however, blamed the tribal elders from this tribal agency for the whole mess.

“During a jirga (held) some months ago, prominent persons from tribes fighting each other had committed to maintain peace,” he recalled. They also pledged to raise lashkars to check “infiltration of terrorists in their areas and we, as government, were more than willing to arm and support them.”

Since the promised Lashkars had not materialised, the interior minister was now willing to take control. “Tomorrow, I am sending an additional secretary to Peshawar with clear instructions to open up the roads to Parachinar within the next 48 hours,” he announced with a pumped up chest.

Rehman Malik should have known without a shouting picket outside the assembly and a walkout by a lawmaker from that area that access to Parachinar had been blocked for quite some time and thousands of families suffered its consequences.

The blockade of Parachinar is doubly painful for me after a two-day stay in Peshawar over the weekend.

Imran Khan and his tehreek had staged a dharna in that town.

The idea was to convey to the US that Nato supplies could be disrupted by public action, if unmanned drones continue “violating our sovereign spaces in Waziristan”.

Would Imran also lead a march up to Parachinar, if Rehman Malik is not able to clear access in the next 48 hours? After all, students agitating in Islamabad for the past so many days, are also Pakistanis like the valiant tribesmen of Waziristan. They also deserve protection.

The PML-N dominated opposition also preferred to act indifferent regarding the misery of students from Parachinar.

Their main worry on Monday was to ‘clarify’ that Shahbaz Sharif had never demanded that Karachi should be taken away from Sindh and be converted into the capital of another province.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan tried doing that while speaking on a point of order, as did the firebrand Khwaja Saad Rafique, who tried to sell the story that Monday’s picket outside a PML-N office in Karachi, organised by the Sindh National Party, “was stage-managed by Dr Zulfikar Mirza”.

He did not see it connected in any way with Shahbaz Sahrif’s remarks.

Cheap point scoring was surely becoming unbearable for me and I left the gallery to keep a deadline.

Published in The Express Tribune.