Naval dockyard attack

Overdoing media coverage is not encouraged, but the relay of some kind of news was necessary

As the hours pass and further detail emerges of the attack on the Pakistan Navy Dockyard in Karachi, alarm bells should be ringing in a number of locations. The attack was reportedly mounted from the sea, and if correct, this points to a significant failure of vigilance on the part of the navy and the coastguard, or, and this is even worse, collusion by personnel of one or both in the attack. Reports say that the attackers boarded a frigate, were spotted and there was a two-hour gun battle with commandos of the Special Services Group (SSG). There appears to have been little significant damage to the vessel. The PNS dockyard is supposedly one of the most secure military locations in the country, yet the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan that has taken responsibility for the attack, has said that it had “inside help”. Taken with the defence minister’s remarks on September 10, when he said that “some naval officials” were involved in the attack, this can only mean the presence of sympathies in the service. Also previous attacks on PNS Mehran Base, GHQ and PAF Kamra had suggested a similar possibility.



Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, speaking in Parliament, revised the numbers of attackers saying that three had been killed and seven apprehended, injured and otherwise. At least one had connections to North Waziristan and there is confusion about the part in the attack played by Ovais Jakhrani, son of Sindh Police AIG Ali Sher Jakhrani, whose body was reportedly recovered from the sea.

There is much the public does not know about this incident, and questions must also be raised about the justification for the media blackout on reporting at the time it was in progress. Overdoing media coverage as in case of the Karachi airport attack is not encouraged, but the relay of some kind of news was necessary. The public were unaware of what had happened until almost 24 hours after the incident concluded. This attack largely failed, but there will be others similarly facilitated. An audit of internal military security is essential — quickly.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2014.

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