ISLAMABAD - The police operation against the Azadi and Inqalab marchers was a mismanaged show, if not a complete fiasco, because the cops while handling the protesters seemed directionless and devoid of having any cohesive strategy, with demonstrators very much in the Red Zone giving a tough time to the police force even after the passage of 24 hours.
Security analysts saw the strategy to flush the demonstrators out from the Red Zone full of flaws and in the face of tough resistance from the marchers the police force failed to achieve its desired targets.
The claim of three security layers by the Ministry of Interior proved hollow and baseless because when the police force was pushed back and the protesters broke entered the Parliament House by rooting out the iron grill, there was nobody standing in-between the Armed Forces and the protesters.
Had the sanity not prevailed on both sides the protesters would have entered into a direct clash with Armed Forces resulting into much more human casualties.
The protesters on the direction of Armed Forces avoided to run over the building and stayed in the lawns of the Parliament House by pitching their tents, which are still in place and women and children are taking refuge there.
Perhaps, for the first time in the country's history the protesters broke into the premises of the Parliament House and had pitched their tents in the lawns and taking refuge against the profuse use of teargas shelling Saturday night.
A security expert commenting on the situation said that such operations to clear certain area from protesters used to be quick and surgical to bundle out protesters in a few hours as prolonged operation results in more casualties and giving time to protesters to reorganise.
The same has happened here as the mismanaged and mishandled operation against the PAT and PTI protesters on one hand demoralised the security officials while on the other hand provided time to the protesters to reorganise.
The decline by couple of senior officers of the police force to take action against the protesters, including women and children, showed the sense of demoralisation and disapproval in the force to take a unified and cohesive action due to which the protesters could not be dispersed and flushed out of the Red Zone effectively despite the fact that over 40,000 police cops were engaged in the operation.
Federal Railways Minister Kh. Saad Rafique during his visit to the Red Zone to console the media persons, who were beaten up black and blue by the police cops, admitted that the police cops were directionless and in the absence of their officers they were tackling the protesters on their own without any proper strategy.
He said that he would take up this issue with the Prime Minister and Interior Minister as he could not see any officer of even DSP rank what to speak of senior police officers in the field to handle the operation.
Sources in the ruling PML-N informed that in the high-level meeting held Sunday some voices were raised against the mishandling of the situation, which had put the government on back foot as the target of flushing out the protesters from Red Zone could not be achieved as claimed by some of the Federal Cabinet members in their reaction to the launch of the Saturday night operation.