Militarised society
IN the two months that have now elapsed since the attack on the Army Public School, much has changed in the country. Dazed citizens have had to adjust to a series of unpalatable realities, the lifting of the moratorium on executions and the setting up of military courts being just one dimension. Some of the measures the state and provincial administrations have considered necessary to adopt may or may not have far-reaching and negative consequences. But there is one particular path that can already be identified and on which the country has already set foot that will without a shadow of doubt lead to an even more violent future: that of further militarising the population. Since the APS attack, around the country children enter their schools as gunmen stand by. As reported in this paper on Sunday, the enhanced security measures at one school in Peshawar include a guard who used to be the office peon, and whose training in the use of guns lasted just one day. KP’s decision to give school teachers training in the use of weapons and, in case of an attack, expect them to act as the first line of defence was shocking.
The problem that is developing, though, is much larger than just protecting educational institutions. On Thursday, the Peshawar High Court directed the provincial government to award licences of prohibited-bore weapons to lawyers, as is already the case for doctors and teachers. The issue is not just about arms in untrained hands, even though accidental shootings have already occurred: it is the apparent attempt to counter guns by putting more weapons on the street, in the hands of people who do not represent state authority. It is perhaps a sign of the grim times we are living in that the trend has not received the serious and critical societal debate it merits. But the alarm bells must be sounded, for this is exactly the sort of slippery slope that leads down to the abyss.
Hazardous rail travel
PASSENGERS on board the Shalimar Express bound for Karachi had a narrow escape last Saturday near Hyderabad. Some 18 of them were injured, including two Pakistan Railways guards. However, according to the local administration in Hyderabad, only one of the wounded needed to be admitted to hospital. Considering that the two bogies of this top-of-the-line express train that derailed in the accident were crowded with passengers, this will go down as a lucky escape in a country that has, sadly, had many minor and major accidents on the rail tracks over the years. There is a long history of unfortunate train accidents in Pakistan, where rail services remain a popular mode of travel and where much emphasis has been put in recent times on restoring to the national railways its rightful share of goods transportation.
Some positive things have been heard about the Pakistan Railways in recent times, like the increase in the number of locomotives at its disposal. Another aspect that rekindles hope in some kind of a revival in the country’s once grand train system is that there is apparently an urge to assemble both the locomotives and the coaches locally, instead of blind reliance on finished items from abroad. If this indicates mobility, there are areas that have to undergo some speedy improvements to make the railways a viable future option, for its managers as well as passengers and transporters. Security is integral to that must-do list. Apart from the all-too-frequent accidents, including a series of them this winter at the level crossings, there have been some instances in recent times where militants have targeted the railway tracks in Balochistan.
There were many such attacks in the restive province last year and this year there have already been at least three such incidents — two in January and the third one in the first week of February. As in the case of the security at the level crossings, Pakistan Railways is dependent on district governments for the safety of the rail tracks in the areas of their jurisdiction. The railways department employs its maintenance staff to keep vigil on the tracks in the sensitive parts of Balochistan, but there is no denying that in the current circumstances it needs to invest more in the Railways Police, just as it needs to work with responsive local-level administrations to project theirs as a smooth, hassle-free, and equally important, safe travel choice.
GB autonomy under threat
THE appointment of the federal minister for Kashmir affairs as governor of Gilgit-Baltistan has been criticised across the political spectrum. It is being described by political parties as evidence of the PML-N’s ‘pre-poll rigging’ in the region in order to create a tailor-made government in the upcoming legislative assembly elections. The PPP, which ruled the region under the previous elected set-up, is not happy with the appointment of the caretaker cabinet or the governor, while the PTI has voiced its reservations about GB’s chief election commissioner. In fact, on Monday, there were reported protests in GB and Islamabad against the governor’s appointment while even some local N-League leaders are said to be unhappy with the governor’s appointment by the central leadership in Islamabad. Among the leading complaints of all parties is why a serving federal minister from outside the region was selected for the post, instead of a local politician.
It is clear that the PML-N’s efforts to mould the region’s political realities as per its liking are having a divisive effect. Not only is the electoral process being made controversial even before the first vote is cast, GB’s limited autonomy, which it secured in 2009, is in danger of being usurped by Islamabad. While nationwide the trend is to grant the provinces and regions greater devolved powers, attempts are being made to go back to ruling GB through fiat from the federal capital. Change in GB’s administrative set-up began during Gen Musharraf’s rule, but it was the previous PPP-led federal government that promulgated the Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment and Self-Governance Order, 2009, altering the region’s name from the Northern Areas and giving the local elected leadership a greater degree of power. While these steps helped develop a political culture, local leaders complained that the federal bureaucracy interfered far too much in regional affairs. But moves like appointing a governor from outside the region, without consulting local stakeholders, smack of an attitude opposed to devolution and autonomy.
Perhaps the key problem here — which allows the centre to manipulate GB’s affairs — is the lack of constitutional clarity about the region’s status. By linking GB to the Kashmir dispute, the state is denying local people the opportunity to fully participate in national life and to run their own affairs. The region is frankly neither here nor there constitutionally; technically it is not a part of Pakistan, yet its limited autonomy is usurped at will. A more long-lasting solution to GB’s constitutional dilemma, one that is not dependent on the resolution of the Kashmir question, is needed. It should either have the powers of a province — as its people have demanded — or it be given a status similar to that of Azad Kashmir. Moreover, the PML-N needs to ensure the caretaker set-up is acceptable to all political players in order to make the upcoming polls free of controversy.
Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2015
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Anti-smoking efforts
IN line with the promise made last year on World No-Tobacco Day, the minister of state for health services, Saira Afzal Tarar, announced last week that the pictorial warnings against smoking, which cigarette packets have since 2009 been required by law to carry, would be increased to cover 85pc of the pack on both sides. The move deserves commendation, for despite the various efforts Pakistan has made to discourage smoking and reduce health burdens associated with tobacco use, the problem remains a perennial one. A study prepared in conjunction with the World Health Organisation amongst others last May estimated that over 22 million adults — approximately 19pc of the population — use some form of tobacco; hundreds of thousands of young people take up the habit every year, and the problem is rife even amongst juveniles.
Much more work, therefore, needs to be done. An obvious place to start would be to stringently start applying the law on smoking in public places and on public transport. Although the issue has been addressed at airports, any efforts to achieve the same at bus stops, railway stations, etc, have clearly not been effective. Similarly, the sale of cigarettes to minors is fairly usual. A sustained media campaign on both these counts could improve matters somewhat. More urgently, though, Pakistan needs to find a way of clamping down on the entry into the country of smuggled cigarettes. In shops big and small, in cities and towns and villages, these poison packages — to which the law about pictorial or other warnings does not apply — are sold freely. Since no tax has been paid, the loss this causes to the public exchequer is significant, and led the Directorate Intelligence and Investigation-Inland Revenue to establish an Anti-Illicit Tobacco/Cigarettes Trade cell in February 2012. Even so, the traffic, particularly over the porous border with Afghanistan, continues. Health warnings on tobacco products notwithstanding, there is little chance of success in the anti-smoking battle while the country is flooded with illegal products.
Securing the parade
THE interior minister may play down the number of madressahs in the country that have links with terrorism — 10pc he said recently — but the extraordinary measures that are to be taken ahead of the Pakistan Day military parade belie that cautious stance. Unless of course the military knows or suspects something that the civilian government doesn’t. As per the announcement, all 39 of the madressahs and two imambargahs in the two-kilometre vicinity of the venue at Shakarparian in the Islamabad Capital Territory are to be vacated a week in advance of the parade which is being held after a gap of eight years. The measure was demanded by the intelligence agencies and security forces and conveyed to the interior ministry that issued instructions to the effect. Meanwhile, the Wafaqul Madaris Al Arabia Pakistan, the umbrella body that oversees the madressahs belonging to the Deobandi sect, has issued a statement denouncing the forcible closure of the seminaries which it said would fuel suspicion against them.
Clearly something is very amiss here. If these are indeed establishments with questionable agendas that could pose a threat to the military parade, why have they been allowed to exist at all in Pakistan’s capital, the seat of its government? And what of the citizenry that has been forced to live in close quarters with such elements? Moreover, after the parade, once the tanks have rolled away, the marching battalions retreated to their barracks, and the dignitaries been whisked off to the safety of their well-guarded abodes, will these evidently dubious institutions be allowed to return to business as usual? Religious extremism is hardly a new phenomenon, and such madressahs did not emerge overnight. Islamabad is also the headquarters for a large chunk of the country’s vast intelligence apparatus. One may well ask what it was up to during all these years when such seminaries were proliferating in the city without let or hindrance. For an answer one would have to look to the establishment’s duplicitous and short-sighted strategy of using religious militancy as a tool of foreign policy, a game plan that has in recent times imploded spectacularly, exacting a steep price from civilians and soldiers alike.
The only viable way forward is to abjure that ruinous path and regulate madressahs — all madressahs of every persuasion — notwithstanding their protests or the threats by affiliated religious parties. Far more is at stake here than a military parade.
A complex battleground
OF all the battlegrounds on which the National Action Plan against terrorism has to play out, none is as complex and fraught with risk as the city of Karachi. Here the framework created by NAP for combating militancy is likely to prove inadequate for confronting the delicate balance of terror upon which the city’s functional peace rests. The reason is as simple as the problem is complex. For a durable solution to Karachi’s problem of organised violence, the city’s institutions, including but not limited to the police, need to be depoliticised. But to do this, some measure of politics needs to be part of the operation. This careful and subtle balance, between eradicating the influence of political parties while relying on these same parties to provide the consensus behind the enterprise, is the Gordian knot of Karachi, and it is worthwhile to recall that every government since the early 1990s has tried to tackle this problem — and failed. Care and subtlety are rare virtues in Pakistan’s political landscape.
The roots of organised violence in Karachi go into a vast struggle over control of the city’s resources — water, land, jobs, transport etc — and the anaemic state of governance in this teeming metropolis of 20m residents owes itself to the fact that informal mechanisms to gain control of these resources serves everybody’s purpose better than a formal and rules-based system does. Eliminating one organised gang has usually done little more than create a vacuum that other actors quickly fill. Lyari provides some evidence of this today, where the leadership of the Amn Committee, created in a sinister move to counter the militarised elements of the MQM, has been eliminated from the locality but a new, younger and possibly more dangerous crop of organised gangs has stepped in instead. Eliminating violent elements can only be the first step to restoring peace in Karachi. Creating the institutions to maintain peace in the aftermath, and more crucially, freeing up the city’s resources from the power struggle, must follow.
The presence of the banned TTP in parts of the city complicates the job further still. It is for this reason that the framework of NAP can prove inadequate in Karachi. Any operation will need to be carefully calibrated, with a clear end point in sight beyond which the job must pass into the hands of city administrators, who have to drain the swamp of struggle over urban space that breeds organised violence. The trick lies in recognising how politics is part of the problem, and part of the solution at the same time. This is the high-wire act necessary for stabilising Karachi. The authorities must learn from the excesses committed in the two security operations conducted in the 1990s, and realise that in Karachi, peace lies in the nebulous middle ground between coercion and consensus.
Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2015