The best course of action is for all political parties to sit together and agree on a one-point agenda.
KARACHI: This is with reference to your editorial of August 21 titled “Calling in the army is no solution”. You have rightly questioned the wisdom of the Sindh government not to present the arrested suspects on television so that at least the general public’s scepticism on this is somewhat allayed.
The problem clearly is that most of the arrested suspects happen to be affiliated with one political party or another. If they are presented before the media and if their ties are revealed, there will be a severe public backlash. There is no doubt that if they were given a free hand, the police, rangers and the Frontier Corps working in tandem can get to the bottom of the violence and catch the criminals and target killers. However, for this to happen, all the political parties will have to give an undertaking that they will not interfere in this process.
The Sindh government has three options to choose from. The first is to declare a general amnesty for the terrorists on the condition that they surrender their arms and turn to a life of peace. The second is to impose governor’s rule so that no party can intervene and use its influence to stop the culprits from being held accountable. The last option is to invoke Article 245 and call the army in aid of civil power for a limited time period.
However, to suggest that since the army is fighting militants on several fronts in Fata and elsewhere; and hence cannot spare troops for, say, Karachi, is incorrect. Troops can always be spared for such situations. Sections of the media have been advocating that the chief justice or the army chief should step forward and do something to rectify the situation. However, the latter’s statement that the military will not act unless called in by the government should end the debate for good.
Under these circumstances, the best course of action is for all political parties to sit together and agree on a one-point agenda: returning peace to Karachi. They should send a clear signal to their workers to end this war. Deployment of additional law-enforcement forces will help but is only a short-term measure.
Mukhtar Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, August 23rd, 2011.
