CHITRAL UNDER SIEGE

It is commonly understood that security takes highest priority when ever there is a VVIP movement, but Chitral was virtually subjected to siege during the recent visit of President General Pervaiz Musharraf to Chitral.
Chitral is widely known for its peace and tranquility while the Chitralis are famous as law-abiding people within and outside the country. Unfortunately the Chitralis were humiliated beyond the limits known to any civilized society or a free nation, in the name of security for the VVIPs. An undeclared curfew was imposed across the district for good over 50 hours and police and other security forces numbering a few thousand, were moved into the district and deployed at every nook and corner of the major towns and entry points from Lowari Pass to Shandur where the president was to watch the polo finals.
No vehicle was allowed to enter Chitral, that commuted passengers as well as the food stuff. Shops and markets were forcibly closed down and the scenario thus created was uglier than what we have been watching on TV, in the occupied Kashmir. Honorable citizens, visiting the bazar for routine shopping, were manhandled by the police on orders of the senior police officers. Chitral presented a look of a colonial city rather than a free district of a free and civilized state. The outside visitors stranded in the city or enroute to Chitral for the Shandur festival, were without food for two days. PIA flights were cancelled without sufficient reasons as the VVIPs were not even in the town during the flight timings. This obnoxious treatment meted out to the Chitralis and outsiders was a shameful manifestation of police rule.
The accumulative loss, the poor traders had to bear, runs into millions as it was the only part of the year they could earn and this financial loss is for greater than what was offered to Chitral by the visiting president as generous grants for the development of this poverty stricken district. One wonders if the visit was worth the humiliation and financial loss the people had to bear.
The people of Chitral carried lots of respect for the president till a day before the visit and rightly too, because he is the person besides the late popularly elected Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who realizing the plight of the land locked Chitralis, not only revived the Lowari Tunnel project but made it a dream come true, but after the humiliation at the hands of the police and security agencies, the respect has grown into hatred. A section of the civil society believes that the overdoing of security measures was perhaps part of a preplanned beaurucratic device to harm the popularity of the president and they were quite successful too, if it was so.
What ever was the motive, certainly it was unwanted and we as free citizens of a free and Islamic Republic have the constitutional right to bring it into the notice of the President, who, we are sure would neither allow nor desire humiliation of innocent and peaceful people of Chitral, and demand probe into the matter so that officials having authority should not repeat it in future. We also demand that the people at the helms of affairs in the district administration and police department Chitral must be replaced immediately before something more serious occurs in the future.
Chitralis as free people of a free nation would never tolerate or compromise their dignity and self-respect in future for security measures. The authorities, without the knowledge of the VVIPs, are driving the people towards extremism which we as a nation keep condemning. Are not we professing hypocracy?

Ahmad Saeed Qazi Chitral.