4th Pakistan Security Conference: Karachi businessmen urged to watch where they donate

No point in CCTV cameras if no one’s monitoring them.

KARACHI: Terrorist attacks in the city may go up against the backdrop of talks between the Afghan Taliban and the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

These ominous words came from the head of the Crime Investigation Department’s Counter Terrorism Unit, DIG Mushtaq Mahar, in his address at the fourth Pakistan Security Conference 2011 held at Federation House in Clifton on Tuesday. “The terrorists may use the attacks to gain more negotiating power,” he feared.

Given such a volatile environment, he urged the business community to be extremely careful in handing out donations since many charities have been known to fund terrorists. “This does not mean I’m absolving the state institutions of their responsibility,” he said. “All I’m saying is take our advice when you hand over large amounts of money to charity.”

The bankers in the audience uneasily shifted in their seats when they were told that 12 major bank robberies in the city were committed by terrorist groups such as the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Explaining why this was happening, the senior police officer said previously the terrorists used to operate on a very high moral ground. “But now they condone and themselves participate in criminal activities like robberies and dacoities to finance their operations.”

The extremely well-spoken former inspector general of Sindh police, Niaz Ahmed Siddiki, gave some simple tips to the business community on better protecting themselves. “Installing cameras around the premises and having them record 24/7 is just half the job done,” he said. Recalling the 2006 attack on the US consulate, Siddiki said the visual image of the bomber pacing along the walls of the next-door Marriott hotel was observed 30 minutes before the incident took place. But nobody came to check on the suspicious-looking character. “The problem was nobody had been assigned to monitor the cameras and just because of that the attacker managed to carry out his task,” the former IG said.

Another tip is to check your rear-view mirrors when you head out for work. “All of you probably take the same route to work every day, but how many times do you take out the time to see if you are being followed,” he asked. Did you choose to ignore the man who’s been sitting just around the end of your street doing nothing each day for a week?

“We don’t want you to become a combat force, but we do want you to get involved yourselves and plan your security out with us,” Siddiki said.

Stressing that, just like a criminal who can be reformed once they serve their time, he said it is also possible to rehabilitate the terrorist back into society. Most of the suicide bombers are unmarried young males, who have been brainwashed thoroughly with the promise of finding 72 virgins in heaven once they supposedly make it there.

Siddiki went over an incident in which a suicide bomber survived when his explosives-laden vest only partially exploded. “The attacker regained consciousness in the hospital next morning. He looked at the nurse treating his wounds and said: ‘So where are the rest of the promised 71 women?’”

The chief executive officer of Security 2000, a private company, Rashid Ali Malik, spoke at length about the “The Great Game…in the war on terror.” He has the experience to comment; in 1979, the now retired brigadier was a lieutenant colonel commanding the army posts on the western border during the Afghan jihad. Malik recalled a discussion with former president Pervez Musharraf who had told him five years ago that even if it were known that Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan, he would not catch the al Qaeda chief himself. “Musharraf said to me, ‘Rashid, do you think I’m mad? We’ll ask the Americans to do it and later we can deny that we even knew about it’,” he quoted him as saying.

Rashid claimed that even though the CIA conducted the operation, the Pakistan military knew about it beforehand and that was always the arrangement in mind. However, he hastened to add that these views were his own and did not reflect those of the military leadership.

Malik warned of an emergence of a Chinese Taliban. “The truth is many of our Pakistani preachers who went to Xinjiang province, were shot dead by the Chinese authorities.”

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