Helpless and hapless

Why do we keep failing in doing something against acts of remorseless killing aided, abetted through ineptness?

Terror struck again, this time at the CID building next to the chief minister’s house in Karachi’s red zone. Someone let the 1,000 kilogramme explosives-laden truck through at the various check-points that possibly begin just outside the Pakhtunkhwa boundary limits and increase in frequency around and within all towns, all the way to Karachi — Pakistan’s finance and trading hub.

Keep in mind it wasn’t one of those shrine-blasters that need at best one teenage suicide aficionado and a minder. This was a blue-blooded, six to eight men, multi-directional, multi-vehicle attack that had the making of exquisite tactical detail in timing, coordinated effect and supporting diversionary manoeuvres. Any of the Pakistan Army’s SSG members would have been proud to execute such complex action with such fine efficiency. Someone at the KESC had disconnected the CID building’s power connection for three days with the result that the staff there were working without electricity. Even generators usually do not operate beyond an eight-hour cycle. This means that servers would not kick in on alternate power and after the generators were gone, the CCTV cameras, too, packed-up. This was happening for the last three days to the most important terror-investigative agency’s headquarters right in the middle of Karachi, in the chief minister's own backyard, not some Godforsaken boondocks. The stage was then set for the final act.

Why do we keep failing repeatedly in doing something, anything, against these wanton acts of remorseless killing aided and abetted through incomprehensible ineptness? Foremost, because it hasn’t yet crossed our minds to do something about it! To us, terrorist acts and the accompanied loss of life is simply an occupational hazard. Because we are in it, such things will happen. And hence that callous wariness to owning the losses and placing measures to avoid recurrence. Politics pervades everything else. The federal government is politically stretched, or has chosen to since it perceives that to be their area of strength — not governance; hence, the political fronts against the judiciary and the PML-N and preoccupation with coalition politics and the wheeling-dealing culture. Insecure environment and instability, along with formulations in policy that please a few, continue to render the economy asunder with no abatement. One time it is sugar, then oil and gas and perhaps next will be wheat. And that too doesn’t trigger the government to act.

More pertinently, Karachi is divided as turf between four entities: the MQM, the ANP, the PPP and the religious factions — political and non-political — that generate their own dynamic as an overarching umbrella under which lawlessness, killings and terrorism abound. If Karachi was a microcosm, which it is, it encapsulates clearly why Karachi, and thus Pakistan, may not have integrated, coordinated and agreed anti-terror mechanisms in place. Politics supersedes all else, while factionalism provides enough to hide under.

The government may have, in effect, outsourced this war against terror to the military, and taken their eyes off it but the results of the last two years should be enough to convince it to retake control. The military has done well on the counter insurgency front but our losses mount because we have nothing in place to fight terror. Counter-terrorism needs a predominantly political effort with effective law-enforcement and necessary legal instruments; the military should assist with intelligence. For that to happen, politics must cede space to governance.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th, 2010.