Promised peace or paper peace?

The government response to the SOS calls for lasting peace in crime-ridden Northern Sindh has lately caused a temporary thaw in criminality. But it remains to be seen whether the lull lasts and whether the much-touted surrender policy and Nijat-e-Mehran constitute a proportionate response that effectively addresses the deeply entrenched and complex criminal dynamics in Northern Sindh - or merely become another addition to a litany of long-failed operations.

For decades, Northern Sindh adjoining the katcha area has largely remained anarchic, housing criminals and organised gangs. In recent years, however, these areas have increasingly turned rogue, with criminals kidnapping, torturing, killing and extorting people at will. Districts such as Kashmore, Shikarpur, Ghotki and Jacobabad have earned notoriety. Street crimes and highway robberies have compounded the situation, affecting lives and socioeconomic activities with impunity. For instance, the 2024 HRCP fact-finding report notes that lawlessness has driven out 300 Hindus seeking safety elsewhere from the Kashmore district alone - let alone the Muslims affected.

Meanwhile, years of criminality and state complicity have ossified the bureaucrats, police and local influentials as the key beneficiaries, strengthening their leverage over the thriving offence economy. Self-styled civil society actors, journalists and religio-political and nationalistic parties have, in return for personal connections, downplayed lawlessness. Behind the ruse of empathy and pacifism, they have colluded with police and cashed in on the offence industry by facilitating paid postings of local police officials, arrests and releases of criminals and opponents.

As a result, people's sufferings were met with either simplistic kinetic operations or transfers of police commands that ironically fueled more crime. Most succeeding police commands either failed to curb criminality - even temporarily - or appeased criminal gangs and cut deals with them to navigate their tenures.

However, after irreparable losses to people and their socioeconomic activities, the Sindh government offered a surrender policy late last year. Officially hyped as the dawn of peace in the katcha area, it has so far yielded meager results. For instance, out of around a dozen gangs, members of only one - and that too, not a hardened one - surrendered to the Kashmore police. The situation in other districts is not much different, except for the surrender of a few hardened criminals in Ghotki. Most of the other "surrendered" criminals were either those involved in tribal feuds or absconding from the law. The rest of the gangs, per intelligence reports, haven't moved anywhere - a telling sign of their audacity and continued patronisation as well as a serious question mark over the policy's efficacy.

Though they have considerably ceased criminal activities, resulting in a temporary thaw, the peace stands on thin ice. The threats could resurge with the transfer of incumbent police commands or whenever they find space. The peace, therefore, sounds more like a controlled calm than a truly cultivated one.

Last month, the government launched Operation Nijat-e-Mehran, aimed at dismantling gangs in the katcha area. Given the unholy nexus between police, dacoits and feudals and the ongoing tribal feuds, decisive kinetic actions against nexuses, gangs and their facilitators seem skeptical, at best.

Therefore, a genuine pursuit of a hybrid approach - combining the surrender policy with the kinetic force of Nijat-e-Mehran - would offer a credible path to lasting peace. For this to succeed, the government and police officials must demonstrate integrity and commitment, free from influences that have long undermined such efforts. The model already exists: in the katcha area adjoining Rahim Yar Khan, SSP Iran Samo's command achieved precisely this balance, dismantling criminal networks and eliminating no-go areas through coordinated pressure rather than deals. This template is one that Northern Sindh's LAEs would do well to replicate.