Terror in action

As if the violence we are already seeing in the country, especially in the northern areas, was not enough, there is now a threat of yet more killings and the terror that results when they take place. The Haqqani network and the Hafiz Gul Bahadur militant groups in North Waziristan have organised a loose band of vigilantes — entrusted with the task of hunting out ‘spies’ who could be facilitating US drone actions — into a tighter band named the Lashkar-e-Khorasan, whose job it seems is to hunt down the informants, capture and then execute them. Such ‘justice’ which denies people a right to defend their own actions has been seen before over and again in the tribal areas.

The setting up of what amounts to a death squad in North Waziristan comes in response to stepped up US drone attacks, with at least 100 unmanned flights reported last year. Recently, there has been a new wave of attacks and most of those who died in them were civilians. The anger we see is then not hard to understand — but the response, nonetheless, is terrifying. This is especially so as the militants are given to doing as they say. A few months ago, six motor mechanics were beheaded in Mirali after being suspected of planting chips in cars used by Taliban leaders which allowed the cars to be tracked by drones. And, prior to that, several times bodies of men either beheaded or killed in a hail of bullets have been found in the agency, each with a note attached to it indicating that the man was thought to be a spy for the Americans. The danger, of course, is not just in this kind of vigilante justice. In other places, we have seen members of groups similar to the one set up in North Waziristan using their position to extract revenge or settle old scores. There is a real risk that this could happen again. The situation points to the need to solve the drone issue, which has created a multitude of problems and added to the difficulties involved in solving the militant problem. The squads of the kind we see set up by the militants are unfortunate. But they will vanish only if there is a broader solution which allows Pakistan to regain its sovereignty over places like North Waziristan and thereafter investigate the murders of innocent people by the militants.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2011.