slamabad is a city with an identity crisis. This crisis becomes particularly pronounced during national holidays, including Eid-ul-Fitr.

Over the course of two decades, newsrooms all over the city have published stories about a deserted Islamabad. While it would be interesting for them to break away from this tradition, it is nigh impossible as the desertion of Islamabad is a very real holiday phenomenon.

It is the only planned city in Pakistan. Towards the beginning of its inception, an army of civil servants was brought, mostly from Karachi. Politicians and civil servants were given residential plots in sectors adjacent to the parliament house. SuperMarket was the border of the town at the time. Gradually, AabPara Market was developed and named after the daughter of a civil servant.

The city was moving from big to small houses and an Industrial Area was set up in Sector I-9. Older residents still remember a large stream of water running in what is now Sector I-8.

No one could have thought that one day these areas would be among the city’s most expensive sectors.

Afghan refugees made a beeline towards the area around Peshawar Morr. Gradually these sectors skyrocketed in value and went out of the reach of common people.

Long story short, over the course of 60 years, the city has grown to the edges of Gujjar Khan and Taxila. After residential sectors, housing societies were filled with working and middle-class households manning government and private offices from 9am to 5pm. Self-same roads and streets with a Markaz in every sector is the course they run before going to bed. The city also sleeps early, and if someone wants to have a cup of coffee after 10pm, he has to earn it through effort.

Gen Pervez Musharraf made an effort in the early 2000s to add some monuments to shake things up. He built the Pakistan Monument at Shakarparian and modernised cultural institutions like Lok Virsa and the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA).

The rapid construction of monuments is often used as a tactic by those in power to distract the public from looking too deep into governmental affairs. Musharraf was no different and the city is still reeling from his follies.

Despite all this, first generation ‘Islamabadians’ hardly identify themselves with the city. They yearn to visit their villages in the KP and the Punjab. Very few people from Sindh and Balochistan live here, although a quota for citizens of these provinces is allocated in government jobs nonetheless.

2021 saw an all-time high in criminal cases in the history of the city. Shockingly, cases of murder, armed robbery and kidnapping rose by 500 percent during the year. Overall, 13,000 cases were reported in 2021, compared to 8,800 in 2020.

The third generation ‘Islamabadians’, whose grandparents had come here, either move to European capitals, where they become first generation Pakistanis or identify themselves with the city. In most cases, those that had plots and built houses near the parliament house have sold their properties and moved away.

Same as every other Eid-ul-Fitr, residents of sectors and housing societies have begun preparations for their hometown journeys. Unlike Lahore and Karachi, the city roads and streets will be empty with a haunted look, except for a few picnic spots where people from nearby villages will come in droves.

This situation is ideal for criminals. In November 2021, the Senate Standing Committee on Interior called up Qazi Jamilur Rehman to convey concerns regarding the increasing crime rate in Islamabad. 2021 saw an all-time high in criminal cases in the history of the city. Shockingly, cases of murder, armed robbery and kidnapping rose by 500 percent during the year. Overall, 13,000 crime cases were reported in 2021, compared with 8,800 in 2020.

A ready-made reply to this state of affairs by the police is that most criminals leave the federal capital and vanish into thin air after committing crimes. It is as if the police believe it is their moral obligation to wait for Islamabad police to come and catch them.

In many high-profile cases, Rawalpindi police were the ones who arrested the criminals.

There is a fear of violence and crime in the city. A look at social media will show you that Islamabad police are busy arresting panhandlers and small gangs. There is a systematic projection of police high-ups on social media. It shows that they are suffering from some kind of popularity syndrome.

Due to increased crime, housing societies close link roads at night, restricting vehicular movement. These societies charge their residents for security. However, when an incident of robbery takes place, the victim is on his own and the security apparatus of the society takes no responsibility. In most cases, societies do not make the promised security arrangements. Obtaining CCTV footage of the route that criminals take to enter and exit is a major task in itself. The buck ultimately stops at the police station. There are records of notorious criminals in the area and investigators continue to link crime to these.

The city and its residents deserve better than social media activism and a public relations drive so that when people leave for their hometowns this Eid, they do it without the fear of theft.

The writer teaches development support communication at International Islamic University Islamabad.   Twitter: @HassanShehzadZ    Email: Hassan.shehzad@iiui.edu.pk