Islamabad: Residents being treated ‘as aliens’: Residential sectors under siege

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Imran Naeem Ahmad
ISLAMABAD: Many of Islamabad’s streets in residential sectors have come under siege of the security agencies because of the uncertain security situation, especially after the recent suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel.

With offices of international organisations still reluctant to move out from the sectors, residents seem utterly confused with what’s going on as permanent barriers have been erected in a bid to prevent any untoward incident.

One side of the street in Sector F8/3 where the offices of the United Nations World Food Programme are located has been sealed off and motorists are not allowed in from that side. The other end of the street sees concrete blocks having been placed – providing barely enough space for vehicles to go past.

Just across the road in Sector F8/2 hordes of policemen continue to guard the Zardari House, although the president has now moved to the presidency.

Elsewhere, in F6/3 where a suicide bomber struck outside the Danish Embassy in June, one of the main streets remains blocked with the concrete slabs staring motorists in the face.

But this is not all; the security agencies have seemingly made the residential areas their very own and have put up barriers even in streets where the diplomats live.

This makes life hard for the locals who are looked at with suspicion even in their own backyard.

Daily Times has learnt that people residing in such streets are asked all sorts of questions by the security guards and policemen and their vehicles screened each time they enter.

“We are being treated as aliens in our own land, I wonder how good is this security,” said Ali Ahmed, who lives in a street where an agency of the United Nations is located. “Our privacy has been taken away by the security personnel breathing down our necks,” he said angrily.

Farzanullah Khan claimed the cops deployed in and around the Zardari House had become a real nuisance for them. “They make too much of noise at night, chatting and laughing which greatly disturbs us,” he said.

MK Sufi, a member of the Islamabad Citizens Committee, said the security people were often seen reading newspapers, gossiping all day or checking registration papers of outstation vehicles, a task for which the traffic police were already there.

The scene in Islamabad is such that barriers of concrete now dot the town and such is the security threat that even those used as road medians have been removed and placed at points where there’s a security threat.

Outside the residential areas, the police and Rangers have set up pickets in the wake of the Marriott attack that ‘officially’ killed 53 people.

The area in and around the Red Zone is being paid particular attention with at least five pickets in place alone on the Khayaban-e-Iqbal, the road used by the suicide bomber in getting to the Marriott’s front gate.

However, residents believe that security had slowly begun to creep into their homes because of the offices of NGOs and other international organisations operating out of the residential sectors.

“This is unfair and uncalled for and an invasion on our privacy,” said Samina Wahid, pointing out that she hates being stopped by security personnel. “By the way what our intelligence people are doing,” she asked.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...008_pg11_1