Sikandar drama: What went wrong?

Unless we don't react with 'speed of war', terrorists will keep embarrassing us with contempt and ease.

Identifying and neutralising terrorists should have, by now, become our most crucial task. Looking at how a lone unprofessional gun-toting individual, Sikandar, brought life to a standstill in Islamabad recently only tells us how weakly prepared we are as a state to handle crisis situations. Ideally, any special operation against terrorists should move at the ‘speed of war’. Looking at the speed and timing with which the lone terrorist was neutralised, one can only pity our woeful approach to counterterrorism.

There was nothing too risky, or for that matter, politically untenable about bringing down or shooting this person. What seemed missing was a direct approach. It seemed that the men in charge were not authorised to take action. Quick and easy solutions were avoided. The episode demonstrated that the security forces are yet not fully equipped and trained to handle unpleasant situations. They could have executed the complete operation more skilfully and in a short time.

We need to fund, staff and train special operation units, and place them strategically so that they are able to respond to far greater terrorist threats than the lone-man threat, which became a mountain to climb for our security forces. If anything, this is a stark reminder to our interior minister of how ill-equipped and unsuitable the security agencies are as security providers to meet terrorist challenges.

In the aftermath of this drama, public anger and embarrassment is only but natural. Enraged citizens are entitled to ask the question, ‘How can they trust their security to a state that responds as meekly as it did to overcoming a lone terrorist’? Providing reliable security to its citizens is the job of any state. The interior minister would now do well, at least, to authorise a mobile ground strike force in every major city, along with an airborne special unit. Their job should be to respond without seeking authorisation and without waiting for orders. Unless we have such special units deployed in real time on the ground, it will be extremely difficult to handle any future potential security risks. Such an arrangement will give confidence to the public and would ensure no repetition and demonstration of our security forces’ incompetence and inability. Such an arrangement would also likely reduce the ease and comfort with which terrorists are currently planning and executing their missions.

Technology and training helps. But before that, we need to have a security plan and infrastructure and resources to support it. We need professional smart operations teams, which have the ability to pay back the terrorists in their own coin. It is sad but true that we have not seen any such arrangements made by the state yet.

Deployment of special ground strike forces in major cities must be conceived, funded as well as executed, as soon as possible. When deployed in an integrated fashion with other security elements of the government, this force is likely to achieve durable positive effects. Its role should be to execute immediate stabilisation missions before handing over the overall security to other security elements. Chances are that its faster and more straightforward approach is likely to trap and beat terrorists more often than the delayed response by conventional security forces.

It is the job of the government that is now reviewing anti-terrorism policy to create this infrastructure of special forces units in each major city and design the security framework within which it needs to employ and use them for a maximum lasting impact. These forces, in fact, should become the central node of our law enforcement agencies. The question of their operational command and the ifs, hows and wheres of their deployment can be debated. But one thing is certain — the lone terrorist in Islamabad has clearly indicated the urgent reform we need in our security response that has woefully been slow, inappropriate and inadequate. Let us provide our security forces with the best quick response operational capability that we can. If we don’t do that, why do we condemn their ineptness and incompetence? It is not the security forces that fail. It is those who are paid to fund, plan, equip, restructure, deploy and lead them, who fail. Only if we react with the ‘speed of war’ will we be able to put up a fighting challenge against terrorists. Else they will keep surprising us and embarrassing us with contempt and ease.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2013.

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