Roman Gladiators
By Col. Riaz Jafri
(Retd)
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar, the personal media
spokesman of Life Chairperson Benazir Bhutto,
spearheaded the debate in the Senate on the ‘manhandling’
of six JI workers in Karachi by the Rangers while
Senator Raza Rabbani dubbed the Rangers as the
Roman Gladiators. (The News 4 June 2005)
Probably both know that the maintenance of law
and order is essentially a police function. Rangers
are called in only when the situation gets out
of police control. Rangers being Civil Armed Forces
take their orders directly from the civil government
of the province they are deployed in. Task assigned
is to ensure that the protestors or the mobsters
do not get out of control or cause any danger
to life or property etc. Now, if the police could
do that that why call in the soldiers? Now, my
dear Senators, action taken by the troops has
to be exemplary and effective to act as a deterrent
for the others. If it is taken as a half-hearted
measure the protestors will get used to it over
a period of time and the troops will fare no better
than the police. If and when, God forbid, that
stage comes there will be anarchy in the country.
No one will be able to maintain the law and order
and the havoc wreaked by such a situation should
not be difficult for any one to visualise.
Senator Babar is an excellent orator with very
good command of the language. However, his understanding
in equating the incidence to those of at Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo Bay prison leave much to be desired
of him. If one sees the pictures of the incident
one would find quite a few soldiers with beard
and, they are good Muslims too. But they also
know that they have a duty to perform. They know
that if these so called highly religious Muslims
are left to themselves they will put to torch
six young innocent Muslim workers in a KFC outlet,
knowing fully well that the workers had been trapped
inside the flaming restaurant and yet these Muslim
zealots would not let them come out. Is this what
Islam teaches? Has any of these so-called religious
leaders condemned their this action? Has any one
of these callous and bigoted religious leaders
gone to offer some solace to the mourners of these
six innocent young bread earners of their families?
Dear Honourable Senators, either let these 'Muslims'
kill each other, burn each other, kidnap each
other, or let the “Roman Gladiators”
throw them down on the ground blindfolded and
save the innocent lives of the few hapless. The
choice is entirely yours.
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