PUBLIC discourse on a serious issue will not be fruitful unless the key words used in the discussion carry the same meanings for all participants. In an earlier article in this space, I suggested that terrorism might be taken to mean deliberate committing of violence against non-combatant civilians, in the course of an armed conflict, to inspire fear among persons of a targeted group and, thus, to intimidate them and their rulers to submit to the perpetrator’s demands.

War and terrorism are not the same even if war often does involve civilian deaths. Those who cause them describe these unintended killings as “collateral damage,” while the other side calls them acts of terrorism. The term is often used loosely, both in domestic and international contexts, to suit the user’s convenience. Nevertheless, certain distinctions should be kept in mind if discussion is not to sink to the level of a ragtag conversation. A young adolescent who brings his father’s gun to school and shoots down six classmates is not a terrorist. Nor is one who kills his wife because she is carrying on an illicit relationship with the man next door.

We are not concerned here with the violent conduct of individuals but with governments and non- governmental organizations that employ and direct individuals to perform terrorist activities. It should be noted also that, generally speaking, the motivation of terrorists includes an element of politics even if, on the surface, it appears to be simply ideological, sectarian, or ethnic.

A distinction is also to be made between state-sponsored terrorism and the violence done by ‘freedom fighters” to their oppressors. Kings, warlords, and governments have deliberately sacked cities, razed towns and villages, and killed unarmed civilians to spread awe and secure obedience to their will in the course of fighting one another throughout history. Opposing forces in civil wars have done the same, and so have modern governments in suppressing rebellions against their rule. These are all cases of state-directed terrorism, and the fact that the agent of the act is the state, rather than a non-governmental organization, does not make it any less reprehensible.

The right to revolt against oppressive rule, including the right of revolution, is regarded as legitimate in democratic ethic and ethos. As the American Declaration of Independence puts it, governments derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed,” and when a government becomes destructive of their rights, the people are entitled to alter or abolish it. Nevertheless, if and when freedom fighters kill innocent, non-combatant civilians on the opposite side — some of who may actually be sympathetic to their caus irrepressible urge to reform. It is also its pressing necessity. For not being able to perform to the satisfaction of the people and relieve them of poverty and oppression, it must find a peg to hang the blame on for its own incompetence or corruption. In that the excuses like the “archaic system”, “colonial baggage”, overweening, inaccessible and politicized bureaucracy come handy.

A more personal reason and driving force, always suspected but discovered later, in changing the laws and bringing in new institutions is to justify the condemnation or persecution of the predecessors forcibly ousted.

Blaming the parliamentarians of intrigue resulting in instability, Ayub Khan introduced the basic democracies and conciliation courts for speedy development and justice. The political part of his plan, however, unfolded later when he used it to perpetuate himself in power.

Now that Pervez Musharraf has decided to remain president for as long as he likes, or the army lets him, it remains to be seen whether he puts his nazims to the same use as Ayub Khan did his basic democrats. The Local Government Ordinance already promulgated and the Police Ordinance in the offing, however, leave no doubt that the army will remain extensively and intimately involved in the emerging political and administrative institutions at the national plane while the politicians and public servants serve and stagnate, or revel, in the district governments. The system will be further buttressed by the constitutional amendments which are bound to follow.

The scheme of the two ordinances (local government and police) viewed together appears to invest the developmental and regulatory roles in the nazims and the law and order authority in the police leaving the provincial governments to glower at both from the fringes of policy.

The Police Ordinance (still a draft) devotes but one of its 186 sections to the police-nazim relationship. It makes the head of police responsible to the nazim but only for the general maintenance of law and order. All the administrative and operational functions and powers remain with the police officers.

A recent amendment to the 1861 Act (which is in force at the moment) makes this responsibility of the police to the district nazim a little more specific without altering it in substance. With the nazims continuing to grumble and the street agitation by the extremists getting out of hand, the Interior ministry on the President’s direction is contemplating yet another amendment to give them a greater say in the maintenance of law and order but none in the administration of the police.

Whatever the final scheme and content of the new police ordinance the source of its inspiration will not be the welfare of the people but the bargaining among the federal, provincial and district governments for greater share in the police power and patronage. But ironically, and almost certainly, the police force will emerge unscathed out of all this tussle. The people or the criminals would also witness no change.

That takes us back to the basic hypothesis that the fault lies not in the law but in its enforcement. The law would not change the police force. The selection and training of its men will.

The billions of rupees the National Reconstruction Bureau and its consultants have spent already and many more billions the governments, commissions, complaint authorities and ombudsmen will spend riding on the Bureau’s back will not frighten the criminals nor make the citizens safe. It will be business as usual for both.

Here are some poignant episodes reported by the press in the recent past which, the authors of the new law and system should explain, could have been prevented or remedied.

One, the incharge of Karachi’s Preedy police station collects a million a month from the hawkers, encroachers and vagrants to share with his staff and superiors. This happens in the heart of Karachi, indeed of Pakistan itself, where a string of inspectors, judges and ministers could have checked it.

Two, a robbery suspect is paraded naked by the police in a Sujawal playground to the delight of some spectators and horror of others (Dawn editorial of November 27).

Three, the desert people of Sindh collect donations to repair a crumbling police station for the government would provide no money.

Four, a number of police stations and posts in Karachi are built on footpaths and public parks.

Five, the president and the governors give 24 or 48 hours to the police to arrest the sectarian mass killers. No one is arrested in months and years but no one ever explains or is punished.

In this background, read for amusement’s sake the following provision in the new police law: No person shall in any street or public place let loose any dog wilfully or negligently so as to cause danger, injury, alarm or annoyance; or suffer a ferocious dog to be at large without a muzzle; or set on a dog to attack, worry or put in fear any person or horse or other animal. The punishment for the offence is fine of Rs. 5000 or a month in jail. The authors of the law in these times and in this country should have known that the people expect the police and its many controllers to protect them from human killers and robbers. They can contend with the canine threat themselves.

The emphasis in the new law is on layers of supervision and control and the status and powers of the controllers and supervisors and not the quality of the force itself. The pivot in the system, old and new, remains the police station and that gets little attention.

All citizens and criminals alike have to deal with a police station. Only a privileged few can have access to the bosses above. The head of a police station remains a lowly official, often a despised tyrant. Neither the image nor the performance of the police would improve unless his status is raised to a level where he is conscious of his reputation and proud of his profession.

The focus of the reform thus should be the police station and not the inspectors general, commissions, authorities and governments. The police stations can be fewer in number but much better equipped and staffed and headed by men who should have the education, training and pride of an executive officer like, say, a captain, or company commander, in the army. Then just one layer of supervision should be enough instead of the present five or six. Total and unjustified concentration on the inspection and supervisory tiers has caused enormous expense but no relief to the victims of crime nor has induced a sense of safety in the citizenry. In the sixties and early seventies, Karachi police was headed by a senior superintendent. Now the plan is it should be headed by an inspector general and seven or at least five deputy inspectors general and a host of senior superintendents. The people then walked the streets without fear at midnight. Now they are afraid asleep even in high-walled guarded homes. However plausible in theory the objective of the new law and administrative framework might be, this experience alone should be a better guide to the safety of the people.

ON Nov 28, 1997 a few hundred activists of the Pakistan Muslim League attacked the Supreme Court building in Islamabad while the full bench led by Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was in session hearing a contempt of court case against the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

A segment of the attack force was driven in from Lahore overnight, assembled at the Punjab House, united with local party supporters and attacked the Supreme Court that morning. Then Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif also flew into Islamabad to supervise and direct the assault. COAS General Jehangir Karamat, although informed of the impending attack, decided not to make a ‘move’, whereas the local police remained bystanders and spectators throughout the ‘proceedings’.

The assailants were later treated to a celebratory lunch in Punjab House. These events have been reported by the print media in reasonable detail and covered on tape by at least the foreign news media.

Why should such an event be memorialized into public memory for posterity?

In order to build a vibrant civil society Pakistan will need at a minimum, democracy, literacy and the rule of law. The last element cannot exist without the generation of a body of law and its application by a competent, independent and efficient judiciary. The assault by the followers of a political party, which was also the ruling party, on the highest judiciary of the land has severely affected the evolution of rule of law and democracy in Pakistan. To allow such acts to pass without serious consequences to the overt, covert and yet to be identified perpetrators of this act will suppress the evolution of democracy and rule of law and encourage similar acts in the future.

It is normal practice worldwide to celebrate victories, achievements and religious holidays. However some great nations also memorialize defeats, struggles, disasters and historical injustices. Such a process allows its citizens time for reflection, introspection, repentance , seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. By recalling these events periodically, a nation can sharpen the ethical sensors of its people which helps in preventing such disasters in future. It is with this objective that I recommend an annual ‘memorial‘ to the assault on the Supreme Court.

How should such an event be memorialized?

To begin with, I am suggesting a memorial and not a holiday. The newspapers should take out supplement on this occasion which should contain articles and photographs of the events, the Supreme Court trial itself, names, photographs and interviews with the ‘visible’ actors who committed the crime. Perhaps some of them might reveal the identities of the invisible actors and provide a behind the scenes look at the goals, strategy, planning and execution of the deed. The supplements should also list the names of all elected officials on that day. This includes the names of all federal ministers and MNAs, chief ministers, provincial ministers and MPAs.

In addition, the supplements should also list the names of the national, provincial and local PML high command in office on that day. It is important that these names are recorded for history including any statements or actions they claim to have taken against or in support of the assault. However, no matter what this ruling class may claim today to have told Nawaz Sharif privately, it is a matter of public record that none of them felt that the crime was grave enough to tender their immediate, irreversible and unqualified resignation in protest and disgust.

Every elected official who did not publicly condemn this attack and tender his/her resignation should be considered guilty of condoning, aiding and abetting the death of democracy and the rule of law by their silence and inaction. Among the elected officials the greatest responsibility for leading the nation on the high road lay on the federal cabinet.

Since these former elected officials lack any ethics or shame they are likely to run for re-election in 2002 and beyond. If they do the voters and their political opponents may ask them the following questions: Why did you not resign when the Supreme Court was assaulted by the activists of your political party? If the opposition party were in power and they conducted a similar assault, how would you expect their elected officials to show its disapproval? If your party came to power again and the same incident occurred, how would you as an elected official show your disapproval the second time?

However, in order for such questions to be asked the media must create an awareness among the people about the gravity of the crime and the identity of the visible and invisible perpetrators. Hence the need to publish a list of the culprits and the proposed supplements on an annual basis.

On that day, the TV should run the tapes of the attack filmed by foreign news agencies as well as hold panel discussions on the subject and interview the then federal cabinet and the PML high command on what they did and did not do, and why. Similar interviews should be held with the high command of other political parties on what they would have done under similar circumstances. Former presidents Leghari and Tarar should also be interviewed on their roles. Schools, colleges and universities should also have activities related to information, education and discussion on what happened, the acceptability of the action and inaction of elected as well as non-elected officials(e.g. former COAS Karamat) and their potential punishment (or reward).

One of the biggest reasons why Pakistan has been unable to build a civil society based on democracy and rule of law is that there has been no financial, political, social or institutional consequences to blunders committed by Pakistan’s ruling class. Typically the ruling class seizes or elects itself to power, blunders and plunders while in office and retires with their honour and loot in tact.

For example, what was the price paid by the hijackers of democracy in the mid-50s, what punishment was borne by the tribe of Ayub, Yahya and Zia for strangulating political activities in a country whose birth was through a political struggle and the ballot box? What punishment has been meted out to the leading actors (political, military and bureaucratic) of the East Pakistan debacle? In fact a report on the debacle would have been suppressed even to this day had it not been released by a foreign magazine. What price has been paid for corruption and misrule by the so-called democratic rulers of the post-Zia period? The people have a right to know.

And more recently what about the accountability of the strategists (ISI, military, politicians, foreign service bureaucrats, Islamists) that placed all of Pakistan’s Afghan policy eggs into the Taliban basket? If the policy was a disaster, the ethics were unforgivable. If the people of Pakistan do not draw a red line at some time, at some place after some blunder, one may regretfully conclude that they deserve their rulers.

Over 50 years of misrule by hypocrites, opportunists and dictators have numbed the political, institutional and ethical trip wires, alarm bells and circuit-breakers of the nation of Pakistan. Comparatively, in India which achieved independence at the same time and with whom Pakistan shares, at a minimum the same colonial legacy, the internal corrective mechanisms (judiciary, press, public opinion, loyal opposition) are alive and kicking. As one example, Indira Gandhi paid heavily for imposing a State of Emergency which curtailed civil liberties in 1975 by being voted out of power in 1977. Since then Indian democracy has widened, deepened, ripened and matured even further.

It is time to help the people of Pakistan take a stand by repairing, restoring and revitalizing their political, institutional and ethical sensors, the internal corrective mechanisms frozen under the rubble of 50 years of unrepresentative and opportunistic rule. This can be facilitated by constantly refreshing, exciting and even inciting public memory of the names of the visible and invisible persons and institutions who planned, executed, aided and abetted the attack on the Supreme Court by their actions, inactions and silence. Unless such an awareness is created the same rotten crowd will manoeuvre itself back into power in October 2002 and beyond.