Stepping up

It is time for the hawks in our security establishment to come forward and for the military elite to put on war paint.

If anyone had any doubts, please know that their back is not broken. The Taliban will come at us with full force. If our security establishment thought otherwise, they should now be clear in what the Taliban want. The recent disclosures by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesperson, Ehsanullah Ehsan, in the eight-minute video release points to a well thought-out strategy; a larger pattern that may unfold in the pre-election environment. They plan to create panic and fear in the minds of the general public to prevent them from going to polling booths to cast their votes. The spelled out strategy of the Taliban is: “We will not allow elections to be held in Pakistan”. They will not target the day of election to strike but will cause mayhem in the run-up to them.

Will the doves in the security establishment, for whom security meant normalising relations with the Taliban and engaging in peace talks, now reconsider their position? If in the past, all the provocative actions of the Taliban had been responded to and merited consequence by our security establishment, would we even be considering them as a real and serious threat today to deprive us of our civil liberties? The security establishment, headed by a cautious leadership, has failed to deliver what was not only desirable but also possible. Dismantling and destroying the militant networks were what the world, led by the US, demanded from us. Dismantling and destroying their networks is what we still need to do.

The most obvious benefit of the cautious security establishment and its commitment was to avoid provoking the Taliban and reduce the risk of Taliban reprisal. I have said this before and I say this again that we need to re-assess our commitment to the security of Pakistan. The general perception in the public is that the Taliban are tough and they mean business, while those tasked to save, protect and guard the public, continue to avoid open-ended confrontation with them. This only makes our security forces look incompetent and unreliable.

In the rise-and-fall-together situation, the civilian government, as well as the military have both gifted us a resurgent Taliban force — a militant force that today, challenges not only the writ of the government but which operates across the length and breadth of the country uncontrolled and unrestrained. All this talk of democracy as revenge and the change of our social and economic conditions will be fruitless unless the creators of the “rise and fall together situation” do something urgently to change the security conditions in the country. It’s time that the army-led security establishment made some hard choices. It has the intelligence; all it needs to do is convert it into operations and conduct multiple raids through the special services group. We have some of the best trained commandos in the world and they are not poorly equipped, either. The night vision goggles, the laser aiming lights on their weapons, the global positioning systems can give them a dramatic edge to dominate and conduct result-oriented night operations. Only the army fully knows how underutilised this capable force has been and how badly it has missed the opportunity to rely on its ability to conduct hundreds of operations. The Taliban have not been given the treatment they deserve. I know for sure there will be many junior officers itching to hit back at these cowards, responsible for so many deaths of their comrades, as well as innocent civilians.

The politicians on their part will have to change their mindset in how they define the senior army officers as professionals. Not those from whom they don’t fear intervention in politics but those who take positions on crucial matters of security and then stand up and defend them as well. It is time for the hawks in our security establishment to come forward and for the military elite to put on some war paint. We have had enough of the cautious and guarded doves guiding and directing our security policies.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2013.