A deadly job

Nobody is under any illusions about the difficulties and dangers of being a policeman in Pakistan. In a country where the quality of the law-and-order environment nationally is deteriorating perceptibly by the day, the travails of Karachi and the Karachi police in particular, stand out. No other city in the country has a mortality rate for its police officers like that of Karachi and it is getting worse year on year. The figures for the deaths of police in Karachi in 2013 make miserable reading. By November 2013, there had been 150 police killed and that number swelled to 172 by December 31. The last three years have all been dreadful — in 2011, there were 53 killed and that more than doubled in 2012 with 122 policemen murdered. In contrast, between 1992 and 2010 about 250 policemen were killed in the city, an average of about 14 a year.

Some die in exchanges with criminals and criminal gangs that have increasingly armed themselves with an array of weaponry, much of it superior to that used by the police. Although it is not possible from available data to be absolutely certain, a majority of deaths in the police force are at the hands of terrorists, and areas of the city where militants have a strong presence record the highest number of deaths. In SITE alone, there have been two dozen killed in 2013, but deaths can occur virtually anywhere in the city, and supposedly safe and secure areas are not immune. The police for their part have killed some high-profile criminal leaders, some of whom enjoy considerable popular support in their communities. They have also killed several members of banned organisations but casualties on their own side outnumber those of criminals and terrorists. Neither the federal nor the provincial government, past or present, appears capable of formulating and implementing a viable security plan for the city. Any number of ‘crisis meetings’ have borne little fruit, and the police in Karachi have become little more than cannon fodder.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2014.

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