Arshad Sharif isn’t exactly a Matiullah Jan. The man isn’t known for his aversion to seeing military men step out of bounds.
What happened in Rawalpindi the other day, however, was enough to rile even something like him up.
Apparently, the traffic police were having the car belonging to a retired air commodore picked up as it was parked incorrectly, in the vicinity of a PAF area. The PAF guards reached the spot and started training their automatic weapons on the traffic policemen.
Abusive language was used and the policemen were hit.
One positive development brought about by Manzoor Pashteen and the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) is the sheer terror brought about by non-violence and asking rhetorical constitutional questions.
In this case, the astute traffic warden asked a disarming question: “Are you actually going to hit a civilian?”
By now, you would have figured out that I did not use the word disarming in the literal sense. Thankfully, the firearm was not used to attack the warden but he did get thrashed about.
Speaking of the PTM, it was certainly used by the movement in an intelligence manner, with many of its online sympathisers sharing the short clip, prefacing it with a ‘if this is how they act in major cities, imagine what they do in the peripheries? Imagine what they do in the tribal areas?’
ٓAn aside: the PAF’s checkpoint is on the road itself, which is really silly. The compound has a lot of space. The security of such areas shouldn’t be ignored. But it could have been a diversion into the compound, rather than bang on the main road. The constriction at this important artery clogs the road and piles up the traffic. Yet another indication of the fact that the uninformed lot thinks they can get away with absolutely anything.
