An absurd ban

This government may be the most insecure in our history. So fearful is it of being blamed when things go wrong that it invariably ends up overreacting in a counterproductive manner. When protests against the blasphemous video threatened to turn violent, the government not only banned YouTube, it also called for observing Youm-e-Ishq-e-Rasool, thereby precipitating the very violence it was supposed to prevent. The government’s reaction to criticism of its inability to stop militant violence was to block cell phone services on the day of Eid. And now, with the first of Muharram upon us, the interior minister decided that the best way to prevent militant attacks was to ban the use of motorcycles for a day in Karachi and Quetta. In addition, he once again blocked cell phone services too. Thankfully, the chief justice of the Sindh High Court decided to overturn the motorcycle ban, although the cell phone blockage stayed in place.

So ludicrous was this proposal that there should be no cause to explain its many flaws but here goes. Firstly, motorcycles are one of the primary modes of transport for the lower and middle classes. A blanket ban would have meant that those who ride motorcycles would have been unable to go to work, thus losing out on a day’s pay, in addition to all the other inconveniences they would have gone through. Then, there is absolutely no reason to believe that this ban is anything other than security theatre. Militants who were planning on detonating a motorcycle bomb could easily substitute it with a car bomb. The ban was also supposed to end at 6 pm, meaning that militants would simply have to wait a bit longer and then carry out their attack.

The point of this proposed ban was simply to save the government’s skin. If there was no attack, then they could claim that their policy was vindicated. Had an attack taken place, the government would simply have said that at least it made an effort and the next time would take even more punitive measures. This heads-I-win-tails-you-lose approach to fighting terrorism has done nothing to make us safer but has taken away a lot of our freedom. The government has now decided it can regulate our communications and movement. It will take more than a high court to put that genie back in the bottle.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2012.