Security hazard

It has become something of a truism in Pakistan that intelligence agencies have secretly extended their scope to cover every facet of the country. A report in this newspaper on April 2 shows that this is both an understatement and an exaggeration. According to the report, intelligence agencies, including the Special Intelligence Unit, the Crime Investigation Department and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have located many of their offices, and possibly safe houses too, in residential areas.

This is troubling for a number of reasons. Offices of intelligence and other law enforcement agencies are one of the chief targets of militants. In the last couple of years, offices of the FIA and the Inter-Services Intelligence, among others, have been attacked in cities all over the country. For them to operate in residential areas unnecessarily puts civilians in harm’s way and drives down property prices in these areas. The government also needs to explain why these agencies are exempt from regulations preventing them from using residential property for other purposes.

If some of these properties are indeed safe houses, then it also needs to be ascertained why their locations are so public. Indeed, the addresses of these alleged safe houses have shown up on the website of human rights group Asian Human Rights Commission. It is doubly irresponsible of the concerned agencies that not only have they chosen to operate from residential areas but they appear to have made such little effort to operate in secrecy. It is this that makes one doubt the efficacy of the agencies in question. In an environment where they are constant targets, government agencies seem to have as little concern for the safety of their employees as they do for those unlucky enough to be living near them. Surely it is not impertinent to ask how we can expect these agencies to keep the country safe when they have made so little effort to secure their own lives and property.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th,  2011.