Belling the (Taliban) cat
Pakistani notion of justice, what is right and wrong is so problematic that a battle against terrorism can’t be...
The Supreme Court showed its anger yet again with the government. This time it was about not taking care of the Taliban threat in Karachi. Thus, the Sindh government was ordered to cancel the bail of about thirty-five odd people who have been freed on parole. It is indeed heartening that an important institution of the state has taken notice of the problem. However, the process of belling the Taliban cat cannot happen without strengthening a number of inter-connected processes.
First and foremost is the issue of reassessing the state’s strategic goals and changing the manner in which such decisions are made. I would imagine that the ‘Taliban’ was being used by the superior court as a generic term which includes all sorts of jihadi groups operating in Karachi, in particular, and Sindh province in general. The Court must ask how and why the jihadis are so comfortably ensconced in Sindh which is reputed for its strong Sufi tradition. For example, there is now the Lashkar-e-Taiba, spreading its network in upper Sindh, especially in areas where there is a Hindu population. Then there are others like the Sipah-e-Sahaba who are spreading their tentacles as well. At this pace it can be safely assumed that the cultural character of Sindh will undergo a change in the next five to ten years.
In Karachi itself, some of the friendly jihadi outfits are now resurfacing like the Jaish-e-Muhammad, which once had greater say in the affairs of the city but then went partly underground for a while. Some segments of the state are even gently arming and training militant groups, perhaps, to counter the non-religious violence and force of Karachi’s main political party.
Solving the Taliban issue in Karachi and the country at large will have to begin with the question of how and why does the state persist in arming groups, and then creates even more groups to counter/challenge those made earlier. More important, the superior court has to question the mechanism of strategic decision-making in the country — especially how are decisions to make and support militant groups made and who makes them? If put under a microscope, the Supreme Court will realise that it is not the political government which can be held responsible for the mess.
Second, at an operational level, can the problem be solved through improving the performance of the police? Indubitably, the police have to perform their duty and make sure cars with dubious licence plates do not operate in the city, or anywhere in the country. However, there is a larger debate which needs to be opened up on how much should the state and society commit to law enforcement as opposed to the amorphous military security that poses as national security? We often forget that law enforcement, especially policing, is more of a public good that requires serious intellectual and financial investment. The policeman doing his job needs to have the confidence that every time he apprehends a criminal or a “Taliban”, the culprit will not be freed with just one phone call or that people in authority will not come and secretly whisk away the culprit. You can give plenty of weapons to the police but unless they are empowered and trained to take action they will not have the confidence to do so. Policing is now almost a science and should be dealt with in this manner.
Intervention from the top, however, is not a police man’s only frustration. He is totally impotent in the face of a judicial process and system that depends on archaic methods of dealing with terrorism or other crimes. The fact is that Pakistan’s rate of conviction in terrorism cases is abysmal. The current legal system lays emphasis on the first information report (FIR) and identification of the convict by the complainant or affected. So, a case becomes automatically weak if a name is not there in the initial FIR or there is no one to do physical identification, known as shanakht parade. But how do the police produce an identifier, for instance, in the case of a suicide attack? Resultantly, there are cases after cases in which terrorists were arrested but then freed by courts because the evidence did not meet the specified parameters. Over 30 FIRs were registered in the Lal Masjid case and these are still pending, waiting for evidence, or dismissal — which is more likely to happen.
Even when there is evidence, as in the case of Malik Ishaq accused of committing about 70 murders, it were delays and hitches in the legal system that allowed enough time to pass and as that happened, the police officer and others who contributed to his being charged and eventually convicted, by a lower court, for being involved in the attack on the Khana-e-Farhang-e-Iran in Multan were targeted and killed. Interestingly, the judge, who had convicted Ishaq, left the country hours after he wrote the judgment. What is even more intriguing is the fact that the highest appellate court in this case, which is the Supreme Court, did not consider some of the evidence admissible and because of that Ishaq was freed. Some sources even talk about threats to senior judges as the case came up for hearing.
The Supreme Court is quite right in asking the government to pull up the police. But what the judges must also understand is that fighting the Taliban is a highly intense and integrated process that will not happen until all stakeholders come together, decide that they intend to fight this battle, and re-evaluate the operational mechanism of their respective institutions. The judiciary has a critical role to play in this and when some judges themselves have a reputation of being latent-radical, then the battle can’t be fought, let alone won. Perhaps, the senior judges may read decisions as in the Mukhtaran Mai case once again to assess how their notions of justice and what is right and wrong are so problematic that a battle against terrorism can’t be waged. The said decision is not about individual conservatism but about a certain mindset that can only strengthen the Taliban.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2012.
First and foremost is the issue of reassessing the state’s strategic goals and changing the manner in which such decisions are made. I would imagine that the ‘Taliban’ was being used by the superior court as a generic term which includes all sorts of jihadi groups operating in Karachi, in particular, and Sindh province in general. The Court must ask how and why the jihadis are so comfortably ensconced in Sindh which is reputed for its strong Sufi tradition. For example, there is now the Lashkar-e-Taiba, spreading its network in upper Sindh, especially in areas where there is a Hindu population. Then there are others like the Sipah-e-Sahaba who are spreading their tentacles as well. At this pace it can be safely assumed that the cultural character of Sindh will undergo a change in the next five to ten years.
In Karachi itself, some of the friendly jihadi outfits are now resurfacing like the Jaish-e-Muhammad, which once had greater say in the affairs of the city but then went partly underground for a while. Some segments of the state are even gently arming and training militant groups, perhaps, to counter the non-religious violence and force of Karachi’s main political party.
Solving the Taliban issue in Karachi and the country at large will have to begin with the question of how and why does the state persist in arming groups, and then creates even more groups to counter/challenge those made earlier. More important, the superior court has to question the mechanism of strategic decision-making in the country — especially how are decisions to make and support militant groups made and who makes them? If put under a microscope, the Supreme Court will realise that it is not the political government which can be held responsible for the mess.
Second, at an operational level, can the problem be solved through improving the performance of the police? Indubitably, the police have to perform their duty and make sure cars with dubious licence plates do not operate in the city, or anywhere in the country. However, there is a larger debate which needs to be opened up on how much should the state and society commit to law enforcement as opposed to the amorphous military security that poses as national security? We often forget that law enforcement, especially policing, is more of a public good that requires serious intellectual and financial investment. The policeman doing his job needs to have the confidence that every time he apprehends a criminal or a “Taliban”, the culprit will not be freed with just one phone call or that people in authority will not come and secretly whisk away the culprit. You can give plenty of weapons to the police but unless they are empowered and trained to take action they will not have the confidence to do so. Policing is now almost a science and should be dealt with in this manner.
Intervention from the top, however, is not a police man’s only frustration. He is totally impotent in the face of a judicial process and system that depends on archaic methods of dealing with terrorism or other crimes. The fact is that Pakistan’s rate of conviction in terrorism cases is abysmal. The current legal system lays emphasis on the first information report (FIR) and identification of the convict by the complainant or affected. So, a case becomes automatically weak if a name is not there in the initial FIR or there is no one to do physical identification, known as shanakht parade. But how do the police produce an identifier, for instance, in the case of a suicide attack? Resultantly, there are cases after cases in which terrorists were arrested but then freed by courts because the evidence did not meet the specified parameters. Over 30 FIRs were registered in the Lal Masjid case and these are still pending, waiting for evidence, or dismissal — which is more likely to happen.
Even when there is evidence, as in the case of Malik Ishaq accused of committing about 70 murders, it were delays and hitches in the legal system that allowed enough time to pass and as that happened, the police officer and others who contributed to his being charged and eventually convicted, by a lower court, for being involved in the attack on the Khana-e-Farhang-e-Iran in Multan were targeted and killed. Interestingly, the judge, who had convicted Ishaq, left the country hours after he wrote the judgment. What is even more intriguing is the fact that the highest appellate court in this case, which is the Supreme Court, did not consider some of the evidence admissible and because of that Ishaq was freed. Some sources even talk about threats to senior judges as the case came up for hearing.
The Supreme Court is quite right in asking the government to pull up the police. But what the judges must also understand is that fighting the Taliban is a highly intense and integrated process that will not happen until all stakeholders come together, decide that they intend to fight this battle, and re-evaluate the operational mechanism of their respective institutions. The judiciary has a critical role to play in this and when some judges themselves have a reputation of being latent-radical, then the battle can’t be fought, let alone won. Perhaps, the senior judges may read decisions as in the Mukhtaran Mai case once again to assess how their notions of justice and what is right and wrong are so problematic that a battle against terrorism can’t be waged. The said decision is not about individual conservatism but about a certain mindset that can only strengthen the Taliban.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2012.