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Pakistanis Doubt Indo-Pak War Will Actually Erupt
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| Business
as usual in Pakistani markets means no one takes war-talk
seriously
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By Asif Farooqi, IOL
Pakistan correspondent
ISLAMABAD, June 4
(IslamOnline) - As the preparation of the Pakistani armed forces for a
possible war with India go in full swing, very few on the streets in
the federal capital Islamabad believe that a war will actually take
place.
The daily Pakistani papers
seem to have concluded that a fourth Indo-Pak war is just around the
corner. They
are heavy with rhetoric from the leaders of Pakistan and India and
news about troop activities show that the Indian and Pakistanis are
all set to fight.
Even international
broadcasting companies, like the CNN and BBC give out the impression
on hourly basis that the two South Asian nations are surely headed
towards a war.
But quite interestingly, the
general public on the streets of Islamabad are not impressed by
newspaper and TV reports. “Don’t worry, nothing is going to
happen. This is all politics,” 59-year-old Muhammad Bashir, a
shopkeeper in Islamabad’s crowded Aabpara market, told IslamOnline.
Pointing towards the crowded
market Bashir said, “Look at these people, does this market look
like a place where a war is to happen?”
Amir Ehsan, a 35-year-old bank
officer, agrees with Bashir. “Leaders on both sides (Pakistan and
India) have their own political compulsions. Musharraf wants the world
and his own people to forget about the local issues and Vajpayee wants
his position to be further consolidated,” Ehsan told IslamOnline.
He added that both the leaders
were using this opportunity to gain as much political benefit as
possible. “You will see after October everything will be fine,”
Ehsan said without explaining his reason for being so hopeful.
Fahad Khan, a 24-year-old MBA
student, feels that the United States was building all this pressure
on Pakistan and India.
“This is all a media
gimmick. The evacuation initially by the British and Americans and
then UN and others is only to pressurize Pakistan to submit to the
demands of the international community on Kashmir,” he said.
“This is cowardliness on the
part of the American, British and other nationalities who are leaving
this country,” commented Afnan Ullah Khan, a 23-year-old MBA
student.
In the local markets, people
are busy with their daily life. “No panic buying, no hoarding and
storage of food items is taking place,” Ghulam Nabi, 43, a
wholesaler at another market in Islamabad said.
He believed that if the people
had any fear of war, they would have started storing food items.
On the other hand, the
government was taking all the precautionary measures to meet any
eventuality. The civil defense department in the city of Lahore in the
central Punjab province carried out a rehearsal to handle an air
attack only last week. Civil defense institutions in other cities have
been on high alert.
Moved
by the uncertainty of the situation, some of the residents in
Islamabad are also frightened.
A
government officer got his family’s passports stamp with a visa to
Dubai. Requesting that he not be named, he said he did not want to
take chances.
“I
feel that war was not the only way out of this situation but the point
is that the rhetoric on both sides was crossing the sanity line. It
[war] could happen by an accident,” he said.
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