The Moral of Murree Is that Pakistan Has a Moral Crisis
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

The blame-game began before the full details of the Murree nightmare, of Friday, January 7, could filter down to common knowledge in Pakistan.

Finger-pointing at Imran Khan (IK), and putting the blame for everything that goes wrong in Pakistan at his door, is the favorite sport with those stalwarts of PDM who have long been flexing their muscles for a showdown in the political arena.

There couldn’t be two opinions that what transpired at the ‘queen of hill stations’ on the first Friday of the new year was a colossal calamity. But it was the result of a horrible snowstorm, of unprecedented scale and magnitude, that had blanketed Pakistan’s most favorite hill station. It wasn’t something of IK’s or his government’s making.

Besides, the Met Office had sounded the alarm of an impending storm hours ahead of the nearly 100,000 revelers and tourists descending on Murree. But in what’s symptomatic of the laid-back, laissez-faire, attitude of our people in Pakistan, they just ignored the warning.

It seems to have become an ingrained element of our people’s cavalier psyche that they not only wallow in a ‘come-what-may' syndrome—which is another name for throwing all caution to the wind—but it also combines with a deep distrust of whatever advice the government may tender.

This should be a cause of concern for IK. That there is trust deficit with the people of Pakistan should worry IK and his colleagues. But this isn’t specific to this government. Over the past decades, the people of Pakistan have become steeled in their insouciance—a terrible weakness of character, no doubt. And it isn’t that it’s the unlettered masses that shrug off whatever comes out from the official machinery; the educated and informed intelligentsia isn’t immune to this syndrome. Government’s word is taken by them with a big grain of salt.

So, hordes of revelers and tourists—eager to take in the sights of Murree-in-the-snowfall—rushed on to it trampling the snowstorm warning under their feet. Yes, the authorities erred by letting ten thousand cars enter a congested small city which, at the best of times, couldn’t accommodate more than three thousand cars.

But when they were hit by the storm, they put the entire burden of dealing with the blast and its aftermath in the basket of the government.

This is typical of trickle-down effect of the pervasive, nay corrosive, hold of our centuries-old feudal culture on the minds and psyche of our people. They expect their ‘authority’--be that the ‘chaudhry’ of their village, or the Deputy Commissioner of their district, or, towards of the top of the pyramid, their government to provide all care and succor to them, especially in a crisis situation.

Self-help is conspicuous by its absence in the attitude and reactionary habits of the people glued to their feudal moorings. Yes, the officialdom was found at bay in its palpable failure to have done some spadework—of relief and emergency aid—in the wake, especially, of the forewarning that a major snowstorm was about to hit Murree.

But those marooned did precious little to help themselves get out of its wrenching grip, once the storm had hit them. Most casualties happened because of motorists closeting themselves in their cars with engines running. The result of it was many of them dying because of poisonous gas that didn’t escape because their car’s exhaust pipes were buried under the snow.

Ignorance, twined with a cavalier attitude, was a major cause of fatalities that have pained everyone in Pakistan. But what the service-providers—hotel managers and owners, restauranteurs, and even ordinary shop-keepers—did to the victims of the crisis, in its wake, is a story of cannibalism, for want of a more appropriate phrase.

Instead of rising to the dictates of humanity and dealing with a genuine human catastrophe on its merit, the entrepreneurs and businessmen of Murree plumbed the depths of moral degradation, of crass greed and wanton inhumanity in their dealings with the victims of the tragedy.

Hotel managers instantly jacked up their room tariff and demanded as much as fifty to sixty thousand rupees for a room, against the normal fifteen to twenty thousand. Haggard women, hungry and cold-stricken children, or crying babies failed to soften their stone-hearts.

A loaf of bread was sold at bakeries for a fabulous Rs 800, against the normal rate of Rs 20.

For a cup of tea, at a road-side stall, a sky-high price of tag of Rs 1200 was demanded against the normal Rs 30. It was price-gouging galore in the teeth of a calamity of apex proportions.

Petrol, with its market price of Rs 130 a liter, was sold for Rs 3,000

But the ultimate nadir, of morality-lost, was touched by those residents of Murree who purposely blocked exit points for motorists with their vehicles and forced the stranded motorists to pay the asking price of several thousand rupees for an outlet.

Of course, the official machinery should be blamed, and held responsible, for letting such acts of blatant thuggery and highway robbery go unchecked. They were obviously sleeping at their watch. Even the Chief Minister of Punjab, Usman Buzdar, was caught napping. He didn’t bother to disrupt a party meeting, under his stewardship, at his office in Lahore and felt no moral obligation to rush to the scene of the disaster in Murree. He sufficed to issue a pro-forma message of sympathy for the victims of the calamity, on Twitter, and took more than a day to visit Murree—that, too, confined to an aerial survey from the comfort of his official aircraft.

As per the official routine—like the much-maligned past regimes—IK's government has jumped to its feet after the disaster has had its toll of human lives and property. A fact-finding committee has been formed, while the eager-beavers of PDM, raising the ante, have demanded that a judicial commission be formed to go into the nitty-gritty of the disaster.

Finger-pointing, fault-finding and labelling all sorts of innuendos at the government’s failure of duty is all that IK’s pervert political opponents are concerned with.

However, none, either among the opposition politicos or denizens of the corridors of power, seem to have an issue with the moral crisis that has come out roaring from this nature’s calamity.

A crisis, a calamity or catastrophe is the measure, in civilized world, of a nation’s morality quantum. What has been witnessed, by way of inhuman behavior and inhumane response, in the teeth of the calamity in Murree, is something that should force all Pakistanis to hang their heads in shame. How could a people—like the denizens of Murree—be so callous, so shorn of moral grain, and human concern, to see a harassed and miserable, crisis-stricken, people—their own countrymen—as tools of extracting undue benefits or game trophies?

All those in power, as well as those vying to replace them, should be seriously and urgently saddled with this introspection and soul-searching. What’s wrong with the morals of our people that they can’t treat a real calamity, a genuine crisis, a catastrophe, in the truest sense of the term, as such, and choose, instead, to behave as plunderers and barbarians pouncing upon a vanquished lot?

Something is awfully wrong in Pakistan’s ‘Kingdom of Denmark.’ Finding the answer to this prickly question should be priority number one for IK. But is he listening; is he alive to it? That’s the question. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)