Intelligence operation
 

10-02-2012
RECENT setbacks have clearly failed to result in any soul-searching within Pakistan’s security agencies. A series of stories confirm that they continue to operate with stunning impunity despite questions about their conduct. On Tuesday, four Jamaatud Dawa activists were taken away from police custody in Rawalpindi. Yesterday brought reports of the disappearance of a forced-marriage suspect from a police station, allegedly by military personnel who claimed the sweeper for an army unit could not be arrested without notifying the military. Police claim that an officer was temporarily picked up as well. Meanwhile, reports continue to filter in about the alarming Adiala prisoners’ case. A Peshawar hospital has said that the four who died, and others currently hospitalised, were brought for medical care in critical condition. Also, the dead bodies of Baloch activists continue to turn up in the province. The assassinations of both Saleem Shahzad and members of Balochistan MPA Mir Bakhtiar Domki’s family still remain murky, and a number of different enmities could have been behind them. But the backgrounds of these victims suggest that intelligence agencies may have been involved, and until responsibility is fixed the sceptical Pakistani public will continue to regard them as the most likely culprits.

There is more than one reason for concern here. Police stations are hardly bastions of fair play, but at least have procedures in place that govern the detention, registration and investigation of suspects. When people are whisked away by unknown personnel of intelligence agencies, everything from their locations to their crimes is wiped off the map, let alone the right to a fair trial. Second, these instances demonstrate how military and intelligence personnel are eroding the authority of the police.
By taking away suspects from police custody, or hampering police investigations, as in Mr Shahzad’s case, they are both weakening this civilian institution and strengthening public perceptions about its ineffectiveness.

It is also clear that the recent questioning of the security establishment has made no difference to its conduct. Mr Shahzad’s case created a global furore over its role. The Raymond Davis incident, Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country and the raid that killed him, and the attack on PNS Mehran all raised questions about its effectiveness, resulting in the appearance before parliament of the intelligence and military chiefs. The Supreme Court continues hearings in the case of the missing persons and has now taken up the issue of the Adiala prisoners. But no amount of bad publicity or judicial questioning has, it seems, lessened the security establishment’s attraction to the quick ‘solution’ of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.