A preposterous proposal

Rather than admitting to its failures, government is holding the entire country hostage because of its incompetence.

In announcing his proposal to ban all prepaid cell phone connections in the country, Interior Minister Rehman Malik is trying to appear proactive in the fight against militancy. We should not be fooled by this. Rather, a mass ban that will affect tens of millions of Pakistanis and deprive them of their primary means of communication is an extremely lazy solution to a real problem. The government’s job should be to strike the right balance between security and liberty by ensuring that personal rights are not sacrificed at the altar of the fight against militancy. This would mean relying on intelligence to make arrests and cracking down on activities of militant groups, both online and on the streets. It does not mean snatching cell phones out of the hands of every citizen.

If the government truly believes that cell phones are the greatest threat facing the country today, it can make it harder for militants to get their hands on them rather than proposing a mass ban. For example, it could tighten restrictions on getting a new SIM card by forcing applicants to give more documentation. It could also limit the number of SIMS one person can purchase under his national identification card. The government has already made telecommunication companies block SIMS that are not verified by a certain date. The sudden need to just do away with prepaid connections all together reeks of a power trip, not necessity.

All tactics that the government has employed so far in the war against militancy have proved resounding failures. Military operations have cleared one piece of land but militants have usually just moved on to another area. Arrests have proven ineffectual because of courts that are unusually eager to release suspected militants and a general inefficiency in collecting evidence. Rather than admitting to these failures and working to strengthen its counterterrorism abilities, the government is holding the entire country hostage because of its incompetence. We should consider this new proposal the latest in a long line of censorship and control efforts, such as the idea to build a giant firewall that would allow the government to block millions of websites at will. We should not give in to fears about militancy to allow the government this power.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 24^th, 2012.