Mobile phone blackout

Few months back, when hundreds of thousands of families were busy doing last minute shopping on the eve of Eid, mobile phone services were suspended across most of Pakistan without any warning and were resumed next day after completion of incident-free Eid prayers. Then came the restriction on two people riding on bikes followed by a complete ban on bike riding on different religious days. Now it’s being announced that mobile phone and landline wireless services have been suspended for next several days, a ban on bike riding in different cities has also been imposed.
What is all this — a futile effort to cure a disease; it’s same as giving paracetamol instead of treating the infection. Alas, it’s no more an infection; it’s a cancer rapidly spreading across the whole body. All such phone service suspensions, ban on general public movement are just an eyewash, a political stunt and an easy-go departure from responsibility to maintain law and order in the country.
If we keep intentionally ignoring the root cause of the problem and do not deal strictly with those institutions, personalities, philosophies, financiers, trainers and their apologists who are spreading hatred against other religions and sects, no such administrative effort will succeed in combating the cancer. We ourselves may be consumed in this deceiving exercise and become just a number in the so far killed 45,000 civilian and military personnel, nothing else. — Masood Khan, Jubail