The farcical Blue Area siege

Irresponsibility is synonymous with the conduct of many Pakistani journalists. The latest examples of this maxim were on display during the standoff between an armed man and the local police near D-Chowk in Islamabad.

After initial reports of the incident were confirmed, the media circus rushed to the spot, and despite numerous requests from the police, the journalists kept advancing till they had ‘comfortably’ positioned themselves just a few metres from the gunman, effectively adding to his target pool.

Then followed live reporting of information acquired by eavesdropping on conversations between policemen at the scene, which in turn gave the gunman and his missus the opportunity to learn what the cops were up to using their cell phones.

Then at one point during negotiations, they gave away the fact that an armed effort to take down the gunman had been given the go ahead.

Eventually, a scuffle broke out between a few journalists and cops after the latter group took the audacious step of trying to push the circus back to a safe distance.

It took an appeal from the Islamabad Police Operations SSP to finally get things in order. And by order I mean the exact opposite, since no one seemed to listen.

Had anyone been killed, the blame would have been placed squarely on the police. Unfortunately, while law enforcement agencies did little to enhance their reputation during the ordeal, this accusation would have been unfair.

Journalists have to adhere by certain ethical rules and guidelines, but every time there is a tragic incident — or in this case, a volatile sideshow — these ethics go out the window.

A further multiplier would come a few hours in, when media men began interviewing the gunman, his wife and his children, giving them the opportunity to portray themselves as martyrs for their cause, which is apparently the implementation of Shariah law and freedom for his son, who is allegedly under-trial in the UAE for murder.

Towards the end, it became clear that the local media is unfamiliar with time delays, as it almost showed the deaths of two men on live TV.

All along the way, the police, either through incompetence or poor planning, allowed a relatively minor and controllable situation to become a circus. Their SSP even went out to negotiate with the man without putting a bulletproof vest on.

The cops were not able to negotiate the gunman into submission. They were not able to control the crowd, and they made no effort to ‘violently’ disarm the man, even when he shot in the direction of some police commandos, thereby meeting the requirements for the police to open fire.

One might argue that they did so to preserve the sanctity of human life, but that goes against the Pakistani police’s penchant for resolving ‘crimes’ through police encounters. Plus, the only human life that is sacrosanct is an innocent one, and the only innocents at the scene were the two children. The wife, by her own admission and according to the psychiatrists that examined her, was a willing participant, and hence a coconspirator.

By the way, after giving up countless opportunities to disarm the man, after he was shot in the back, the boys in blue wasted no time in taking their bangles off to open celebratory fire into the air and slapping the critically-injured man in the head at least twice.

But the media and the police weren’t the only ones acting like clowns at the sideshow.

Amid the frenzied scenes, the ‘tamashai’ crowd refused to move back and was in fact poking fun at the gunman as if he were holding squirt guns rather than automatic weapons. One straight burst from either of the guns could have mowed down a dozen people before the police had time to react.

Unfortunately, anyone who has seen Pakistanis forming a line or misbehaving with caged animals in zoos knows that civilised behaviour is something we don’t practice very well.

Finally, there is a fine line between courage and stupidity, and Zamarud Khan may well have crossed it. While the PPP leader may deserve some credit for helping end the farcical episode, the fact of the matter is that by intervening, Khan put the lives of several ‘tamashais’ at risk. After all, what if the stray bullets that hit the road had gone into the crowd? What if more than one or two shots had gone off? If this were a Die Hard movie, ‘Zamarud Willis’ could go ahead and try whatever he wanted, but since it was real life, Zamarud Khan should have also been focusing on letting the police end the ordeal without putting lives at risk.

But that would have required rational thinking, which the city’s police, journalists, politicians, and citizenry have shown they are incapable of.

The writer is a sub editor on the Islamabad Desk. [e-mail]

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2013.