Car bomb blast brings back fear, anxiety, panic

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

In dark blue uniforms, the armed guards in front of the Cantonment branch of the Askari Leasing Bank were extra vigilant and cautious but when at midday on Saturday a brutal suicide car bomber only a few yards away detonated 100 kilogrammes of explosives in the car parking lot, there was hardly anything that their vigilance or cautiousness could do about it.

With huge blocks of concrete and other barriers placed before the main entrance, the employees and the account holders felt visibly inconvenient the manner in which they had to make their way into the branch. Several of the shops in the vicinity which served as showrooms for new cars were badly damaged.

A truck belonging to the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) force was burnt out of shape while its driver and helper died on the spot. Brand new vehicles placed for sale were damaged or destroyed. Nearly 40 vehicles in the parking area were damaged or destroyed. There was a time when visitors felt safer as long as they were within the limits of NWFP's biggest and the high-security Peshawar Cantonment.

However, even if temporarily, the unidentified suicide car bomber exploded the myth of safety and security in the well-guarded Saddar area. Although the branch managers, the actual recipients, never whispered about the matter to anyone yet some eyewitnesses volunteered the information to newsmen that the bank branches in the area had reportedly been receiving threatening letters against the presence of women either as employees or account holders.

In some ways the Cantonment blast was probably linked to the suicide truck bomb explosion that flattened police station Mandan located some eight kilometres to the south of Bannu on Saturday morning. BBC said that an activist of Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Qari Hussain, considered to be the mastermind behind suicide attacks, had phoned up its bureau in Peshawar to accept the responsibility for the Mandan adventure.

He also said that the recent silence of TTP did not mean any weakness on its part and TTP would undertake more of the similar attacks in various cities. Just like the managements of banks, the law enforcing agencies have installed a number of secret cameras in the Cantonment area. Prominently placed boards warn the visitors to beware as their movements are being monitored by the network of cameras.

DIG Liaquat Ali, recently appointed as chief of the Capital City Police in place of Siffat Ghayyur, visited the blast site. However, he hesitated in admitting to the fact that the suicide attack was the result of security lapse. "After all, policemen too are human beings. If they manage to seize four vehicles, the fifth one may very likely go unnoticed", said the new CCP head.

The common man may wonder indeed at the police officer's remarks. If a desperate suicide bomber manages to bring a Toyota car full of 100 kgs of explosives to the southern side of the CMH boundary wall in broad daylight and plunges the city into sobs and sighs, it will be considered a security lapse.

Depending on the leisure available to you, stopping by a roadside newspaper stall in the Qissakhwani Bazaar, on the main Saddar Road or near the Spin Jumaat may be fun. Very few people buy expensive periodicals but they feel pleased that the publications are appearing regularly at the stalls.

Once in a while, a car pulls up; a properly dressed, well-meaning woman climbs down the vehicle, asks for the latest copy of some monthly digest and after making the payment gets back into her automobile casually throwing some coins on to the lap of an alms seeker crouching on the pavement.

You wonder at the good luck of the monthly digests appearing from Lahore and Karachi that still have the will and the technique to survive. One occasionally feels the temptation to pick a copy and have a quick look at them. More often than not, the digests carry run-of-the-mill short stories in which the first cousins in their adolescence take a fancy for one another but after romantic pledges the boy changes loyalties for a wealthier girl and the former fiancée curses her fate and the human frailty.

As opposed to these cheap, easy-to-get monthly digests, there are glossy magazines published in English language. Readers of quality magazines carrying rich contents and serious stuff may feel saddened at the report that the 'Far Eastern Economic Review' may feel compelled to suspend its publication from December 2009.

Starting out as a weekly magazine, the Review began its publication in 1946. However, Dow Jones, its owners later turned it into a monthly magazine. A part of the News Corporation, the Dow Jones says that the sales proceeds and income from advertisements put together do not constitute enough funds to continue the publication of Review.

The owners say that by closing the magazine, they will focus on their online publications and strengthen the Wall Street Journal in Asia. Readers of the Review in Peshawar may recall that Pakistan's ambassador to USA Hussain Haqqani and the author of two best-selling books on Taliban, Ahmad Rashid, remained associated with it for quite a few years.

For its objective reporting and strict editorial policy, several authoritarian regimes in Asia either banned its entry into their country or censored some pages by splashing black ink on them. Up to the 1990s, the magazine was highly regarded for its professionalism but later when the owners turned it into a monthly publication, they changed the whole character and profile of the magazine by introducing, inserting or adding mere trivialities into it.

Readers may also recall that before the announcement of the closure of Review, another widely-read monthly magazine the Readers Digest had declared itself to have gone bankrupt. During the peak period of its fame, it used to be published in 21 languages of the world with a record 50 global editions. Bankruptcy may not really affect some of its editions but its world ranking may receive a setback. Pakistan itself has seen the closure of many of its periodicals like the Viewpoint, Lail-o-Nihar (both from Lahore), Eastern Film (Karachi) and the Frontier Guardian (Peshawar).