Who will help the police?

Twenty-seven policemen were killed in Karachi in the first month of this year. Another six lost their lives in the first three days of February. This is the highest number of policemen killed in any city of the world in any one month. Can any police force continue to function with such massive loss of lives? Clearly, we are doing something that is blatantly inappropriate and unprofessional. It requires no counterterrorism expert to understand that the only way to fight insurgency is to work proactively and eliminate it or control its primary life support components.

The militancy in Karachi (and in Pakistan) has escalated to its next logical level — a war between the private militias and the state institutions. Lacking in training, technology, motivation and equipment, the police stands in the first line of fire and must bear the greatest brunt. To make matters worse, it is controlled by those who themselves represent one or the other militia. When things begin to get ugly, our immediate recourse is to fall back on the Rangers. This may be termed a replacement policy for short-term gain. Only few understand that the police does not need to be replaced. It needs to be reformed and liberated. The role of the state must be two-fold: to resurrect the police force and to eliminate the core components of violence.

With 20 million weapons in the hands of civilians, there is absolutely no chance of peace making a voluntary appearance. Any sensible state will leave everything and go after de-weaponisation as its first priority. The state has inadvertently promoted the growth of private armies (forbidden by the Constitution) by granting millions of gun licences. It now needs to mitigate its past blunders by launching a massive across-the-board de-weaponisation programme.

The Arms Ordinance of Pakistan, instead of controlling the licences, has been the largest source of indiscriminate proliferation of weapons. It enables the government to give any number of licences to those it wishes to appease or bribe. The discretionary Arms Ordinance ought to be struck down to give a clear message that the government will no longer be engaged in patronising militancy or creating private militias.

There are thousands of vehicles with fake, foreign, AFR (Applied for Registration) or missing number plates that move around unchecked on the streets, often indulging in crime, bomb attacks and kidnapping — with no traces of their origin or ownership. The government is guilty of not having registered thousands of vehicles that are in its own use, thus providing opportunities to criminals to use ‘look-alike’ number plates.

There are an estimated 40-60 million illegal, untraceable and foreign SIMs being used in Pakistan. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has failed to take any action to curb this vital component of militancy. All SIMs need to be blocked (in phases) and replaced by SIMs traceable to individuals through CNICs, addresses and biometrics.

Pakistan is a haven for investment in crime and militancy. Killers can rest assured that they will not be punished. They will be facilitated to escape from prisons. Their release would be open to negotiation and they would be free to kill more people. The government must put an end to this dithering.

Many of the police processes go back at least 100 years. There is no way the police can handle complex, modern-day militancy with ancient means and methods. The police needs to have rapid access to data relating to criminals, vehicles, weapons, inmates and SIMs. It must have online links with NADRA to speedily carry out background verification of suspects.

Finally, we need to focus on improving and expediting the dilapidated criminal justice system, without which the police would only be going around in circles. Rapid and concurrent action on the abovementioned initiatives may be our only chance to curb militancy, to establish the writ of the state and to enable the police to protect itself and others.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 10^th,  2014.

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