The longer View

WITH the North Waziristan IDP crisis still unfolding, it is necessary and right that much of the national attention is focused on getting the state to do everything it can to ensure the ordeal of being made homeless within one’s country is rendered less painful in every way possible. Yet, perhaps the most significant thing that can be done in the long run to offset the misery of the North Waziristan residents is to ensure that the impending military operation against militants in the tribal agency is as total, complete and serious as possible. And for that, both a longer-term view and a much wider canvas must be considered. First, consider the logic of the militant. There is little hope of militants prevailing in a frontal, direct battle with the Pakistan Army, especially once the army puts its overwhelming resource superiority into motion. But there are two things a militant can do: live to fight another day and hurt state and society in a way that it saps morale.

As far as living to fight another day goes, militants escaping a military dragnet or avoiding a hammer and anvil strategy is near inevitable. Rarely, if ever, does the entire militant leadership facing a counter-insurgency operation end up in custody or dead in battle. What, then, of the militant leader who lives to fight another day? The embattled TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah has demonstrated just how dangerous that possibility can be, seeing that he was the key militant survivor in the most successful military operation to date. But the problem is more complex than a few militant kingpins who escape capture and resurface to cause trouble again. That next phase – of a militant resurgence in an area cleared and held by security forces – is in large part possible because there has been, and still appears to be, no long-term plan to return conflict areas to local, civilian-run administrations. And without that eventual movement towards normality, the alternative is painfully clear: an open-ended military presence that makes more likely pockets and spaces among the local population for militants to hide in and operate from. Just as the civilians cannot do the military’s job, the military cannot do the civilians’ job. But are they really willing to work in the sequence required?

There is also a serious problem in the short run that must be contended with. Time and again, the militants have demonstrated a willingness and ability to exploit the laxity and breakdown in discipline in defensive security measures during Ramazan. Given that the North Waziristan operation is imminent, so is the possibility of intense blowback in the cities – just when the law-enforcement and security personnel may lower their vigilance and preparedness. Is there a plan to fend off that particular Ramazan effect?


Custodial Torture

TORTURE by the state has a long history. It has been exercised largely as a means of extracting information, intimidating individuals or exacting revenge for perceived transgressions. More often than not, the motive is a mix of all three. In Pakistan, custodial torture is a fact of life. It is meted out on any given day at any one of the police stations in the country and in shadowy internment centres run by the security establishment. Evidence of the latter is most clearly manifest in the fate of ‘missing’ persons, who either turn up as mutilated bodies discarded somewhere or as barely alive, battered individuals occasionally disgorged by the state after repeated exhortations by the courts. A seminar held in Karachi last week to commemorate the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture gave voice to the demands of civil society for a law against torture. Such legislation would be in keeping with Pakistan’s international commitments: the country ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture in 2010.

In modern times, with the concepts of universal human rights and due process taking pre-eminence alongside the development of finely tuned criminal justice systems, recourse to torture is deemed neither acceptable nor productive. Indeed, it is often believed to be counterproductive, with information so gleaned seen as unreliable and the brutal methods fuelling further disenchantment with the state. That said, sometimes ‘civilised’ countries such as the US have until recently cited exceptional circumstances to justify the use of methods — euphemistically termed “enhanced interrogation techniques” — that would be categorised as torture under international law. However, not only was the exposé of torture and abuse at the Guantanamo prison greeted by outrage across the world, not surprisingly, it also served as an unparalleled recruiting bonanza for Islamist organisations, one that continues to exact a terrible cost. With the Pakistan Army deployed against Islamist militants in a “war for the country’s survival”, and the jingoism that such a scenario invariably generates, it is all the more imperative that the issue be flagged at this time. Moreover, the sweeping powers of arrest and detention given to the security apparatus by the Protection of Pakistan Ordinance 2013 can easily be abused if stringent checks are not imposed. A far better alternative to visiting physical and mental cruelty upon those suspected of anti-state sentiments is to enhance intelligence-gathering measures and let the law decide the guilt or innocence of an individual.


Polio Out of Control

NOTHING, it seems, is going to shake the government out of its torpor over a crisis that is rapidly spiralling out of control. Polio has been in the headlines for a considerable length of time now, with evidence mounting over the years that a highly infectious disease Pakistan once appeared on the verge of eradicating is in resurgence. Pakistan was recently placed on a list of countries poised to re-infect the world at large, and the World Health Organisation recommended a travel ban on people who do not have proof of vaccination. This was a deeply worrying development, and the expectation was that the government would immediately and concertedly turn its attention towards it. Yet, other than half-baked attempts at facilitating travellers by providing vaccinations and certificates at designated points, we have not seen much forward progress on the issue, as newly detected cases in KP and Fata show. Indeed, challenges that ought to already have been overcome, and gaps that should have been plugged, continue to present themselves.

Consider, for example, the case of a one-year-old boy who has become the seventh child to be diagnosed with polio in Karachi this year. His family left Swat in the wake of the military operation there, and once in the metropolis, the men responsible for his safety refused to let the vaccine be administered to him. Nevertheless, polio vaccination teams took advantage of the times when only the women were home, and he received three doses of the OPV. He has nevertheless contracted polio, which means that the efficacy of the vaccine had been compromised. One explanation is obvious, say doctors: the cold-chain storage procedure in which the polio vaccine is kept was interrupted. Has this occurred to anyone at the administrative level, provincial or federal, even as there is much talk of vaccinating the thousands of children flowing into the provinces from North Waziristan? That certainly does not appear to be the case. In its inattentiveness, Pakistan is risking even more isolation.

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2014