What is perhaps needed is to place them under one command so that they all work together for the same goal.
KARACHI: Your editorial of September 8 titled “In the name of revenge” raises a very important question, which is that how could terrorist penetrate a highly sensitive and guarded area in Quetta and carry out an attack on the home of a senior FC officer. Not only is this a breach of security procedures and protocols, it is also a serious intelligence lapse, and one that warrants a thorough investigation.
We need to understand that we are confronted with an enemy which is not only highly-trained but also motivated, and it seems to be able to carry out attacks on sensitive and well-guarded military and paramilitary installations in the country with impunity. For dealing with it, we need a matching response and this requires a sophisticated proactive approach especially as far as intelligence is concerned.
Our present policy to react to situations instead of pre-empting them, and this makes us more vulnerable. We must do away with erecting more barricades, obstacles and checkposts around sensitive installations because all this does is allow terrorists ready-made targets through which they can inflict maximum damage. It is very strange that a truck laden with 100 kilograms of explosives was parked close to the residence of a senior FC officer in a high-security zone. Why was it allowed to even get this close to the officer’s home?
Under the circumstances, we have no option except to take the fight to the militants, so that we can save more blood of innocent people from being spilt and so that we can secure our future. There is a multitude of security and intelligence agencies but they don’t seem to be producing the desired results since the attacks keep happening over and over again. We have not only the ISI, MI with its various segments, the IB, the Special Branch, local police, but also log area, field formations security, Rangers, FC and so on. What is perhaps needed is to place them under one command so that they all work together for the same goal. One only has to look at Abbottabad and PNS Mehran attack where it was quite evident that there was little or coordination between the various agencies.
Lt-col (r) Mukhtar Ahmed Butt
Published in The Express Tribune, September 9th, 2011.
