Making Karachi gun-free

KARACHI may have much in common with other Third World cities, but its graduation from a metropolis with the usual street crimes to one featuring institutional mob violence distinguishes it from its peers.

Karachi has dozens of well-armed private militias ready to spring into action taking their cue from the local street commander or even an undesirable TV ticker. The possibility of a major conflict constantly lurks around the corner.

Pakistan, according to the International Action Networks on Small Arms, has one of the highest per capita figures of gun ownership in the world. Though there are no official figures, rough estimates put the total number of small arms, licenced and unlicenced, in the country at more than 20 million. Civilians are the largest category of gun owners, holding more weapons than the military and the police.

Karachi records some 1,400 gun-related murders each year. Karachiites are frequently exposed to riots, car snatching, mobile snatching or armed groups demanding the closure of businesses. Often when tension builds up, the situation rapidly transforms itself into a shootout taking the lives of innocent citizens.

The problem has been further compounded by the feudal mindset of the Pakistani elite, which believes that the display and brandishing of weapons is a sign of power, status and influence. Eager to convey this message, hundreds of them, drive around unchecked with weapon-brandishing goons. Likewise their homes are protected by private guards carrying illegal weapons.

Responsible governments take the issue of gun control with great seriousness. Malaysia has developed strict laws resulting in a near zero gun violence rate. The Japanese law is a classic example of ‘less words, more action’. It simply says, “No one shall possess a firearm or a sword.” Thailand plans to be gun-free in five years. Even Bangladesh has rapidly moved to improve its gun registration, control and recovery processes.

Pakistan, on the other hand, despite its high rate of violence, has continued to pay lip service to this very serious problem. In fact it has gone out of its way to add fuel to the fire. Some time ago, the Punjab home department issued ‘non-prohibited bore’, ‘free of cost’ weapon licences to 60 top bureaucrats. Not to be left behind, our London-based MQM leader asked his followers in Karachi to start collecting guns for self-defence. The sale of weapons in Karachi went up 15 times, much to the delight of arms dealers.

The belief that possessing a gun makes one safe has been proven wrong time and again. Every person acquiring a weapon contributes to a mini armament race pushing yet more people to acquire or upgrade their weapons. Karachi has just too many weapons and too little of law to be a peaceful city. Despite its frequent appeals for peace, the government fails to see the obvious connection between violence and guns. The initiative to make Karachi a peaceful and gun-free city must therefore come from its real stakeholders — the citizens.Turning Karachi into a gun-free city is a complex but doable task. Complex, because it demands strong political will, stakeholder participation, and a scientific and sustained methodology. The last two are often the missing links. A three-stage programme can be drawn up to make Karachi a gun-free city. Stage one, typically called the ‘planning’ stage, involves conceptualising and agreeing on a complete action plan from beginning to end. This would involve issues like the consensus of stakeholders, timetables for the surrender of weapons, compensation, collection of statistics, incentives, penalties and dividing Karachi into well-defined ‘gun accountability’ zones.

Planning would also include procedures for storage, records, computerisation, management of returned weapons, monitoring, verification, searches and rewards for whistleblowers and information providers. The involvement of the police, government, politicians, citizens and organisations like Shehri, CPLC, HRCP and many others who work on peace- and justice-related issues is critical to the process. Needless to say the gun-free city project has no chance of success if it is not implemented in an even-handed manner and without discrimination.

The second stage involves converting the plan into action. The first step is to widely disseminate the plan and create public awareness and support. This would need a well-planned and massive media campaign. The action phase must begin by the government first disarming its own officials and politicians (the most difficult part). Except for law-enforcement personnel (when in uniform and on duty), carrying and displaying weapons for all else must be completely forbidden.

Private security agencies must be disarmed. If a private armed guard is found outside the gate or inside the vehicle of any official, it is the official who should be held responsible. TV and newspaper ads should ask citizens to report any violations and the police must respond rapidly. Political leaders must be asked to appeal to their followers to surrender all weapons and should themselves take the lead in doing so. Needless to say the issuance of new licences should be stopped altogether.

The second stage cannot be effective unless there is a strong mechanism for checks and balances. Thus independent groups must be established to monitor the effectiveness of the gun-free city initiative. Scientific monitoring processes, audits, routine on ground checks, and random snapshot checks must be established to verify compliance. The data thus collected should be analysed and necessary corrective actions taken.

The last stage involves the programme being subjected to regular joint reviews by all stakeholders who must have the authority to effect necessary changes for improvement. The general public should be kept informed.

Pakistan could learn from the experience of El Salvador, a nation with the highest crime rate in Latin America. It decided to implement a ‘free from guns’ policy for its violent San Martin municipality. In the first eight months, San Martin saw gun-related homicides drop by 30 per cent and the overall crime rate by more than half. Can Karachi replicate the San Martin model and become Pakistan’s first gun-free city?

naeemsadiq@gmail.com

A tale of three speeches

THE day Asif Zardari was supposed to make one speech, he ended up making three. Well, he only meant to make two, but he made three. This isn’t statecraft; it’s the blind leading the lame leading the deaf.

The ‘second speech’ fiasco is being blamed on that political appointee at PTV, Shahid Masood. Here’s some advice for Zardari: fire him. And the others too.

I’m sure all the people working at PTV, the information ministry and in the president’s media team are nice people. I have no doubt they have families to support and unemployment in these tough economic times is nothing to sneeze at. But good, decent people can also be rubbish at their jobs. The media team surrounding Zardari has a simple task: make the president look presidential. Think Jinnah, not a Disney cartoon. The only reason Zardari got in front of a camera in the middle of the night was to reassure a frightened public that he has a steady hand at a time of crisis. His unsteady gaze and fumbling for words probably frightened the people a little more — this is the man in charge of our fate and security?

The main show — the speech before the constellation of Pakistani and foreign elite — was botched too. I sat, pen in hand, ready to learn about Zardari’s plan for saving us. By the end of it, I wasn’t the only one wondering who will save us from Zardari. Forget his halting, fumbling delivery and his poor English — that’s just red meat for the snickering patricians amongst us. It matters little in which language he speaks and how he chooses to phrase himself, if — if — he is saying the right things. But he didn’t.

Give him a break, the jiyalas cry. He’s learning on the job. Well, I’m sorry. Since when did supporting Team Democracy mean you have to support Team PPP? Especially if Team PPP is running the place into the ground? If Zardari isn’t ready for statesmanship, why must an orphaned country wait for him to grow into his job? He is only president because he wanted to be. And the same goes for the PPP co-chairmanship. It may rankle that the PPP is, in the memorable phrase of Tariq Ali, a “family heirloom”. But that’s our politics, so we can’t get stuck up over it. Now that Zardari has exercised his right to become leader though, it is our right to expect leadership from him.

Bizarrely, some in the news media have argued that Zardari’s speech in parliament was presidential and that if he had given detailed policies he would have been criticised for eviscerating parliament. Rubbish. The circularity of power at the top of the civilian government is lost on nobody. Zardari is the PPP co-chairman. Forget the de facto configuration of power, it is factually his government. Were he to give up the co-chairmanship and strip himself of the powers inimical to parliamentary democracy, it would make sense to make a show of separating the presidency from parliament. But he hasn’t. The country needed policy. Asif Zardari could have made everyone happy by simply prefacing every policy statement with, “My government has instructed me to say....” But we got nothing.

Zardari thundered that he wouldn’t let anyone violate our sovereignty. When Kayani said the same, the realists exchanged knowing glances. The general was pandering to the gallery — playing to a nationalist audience. It was red meat for the people, and the people loved it. The general was playing politics. It’s what Zardari should have done weeks ago.

But in politics what’s fresh yesterday is stale today. A week is a long time in politics. Parroting Kayani’s line 10 days after the general surprised the world was pitiful. It’s a bit silly to talk about inviolable sovereignty when missiles have been raining down on Waziristan for weeks, isn’t it? Tell us instead what you’re going to do about missiles — and terrorism. Especially when you’re about to fly off to the UN to hobnob with the world’s elite.

The Marriott carnage underlined the deadly seriousness of the terrorists. Some still don’t get it. A hack was on TV saying Pakistanis would rather eat onions than lose their self-respect, which American missiles are presumably devouring. This would no doubt be news to all those Pakistanis crying out about inflation. All this talk of our war or America’s war is beside the point. Zahid Hussain has said it best: it is an internal war. Like it or not, we have to fight it — because those fighting the Americans are killing us. And if we don’t kill the terrorists first, the Americans will kill the lot of us.

You want to win the war against the terrorists, defeat those who killed Benazir Bhutto and hundreds of Pakistanis, and rein in our shadowy agencies? Win over the people. All this talk of not violating our sovereignty and being our war is only violating our eardrums. Tell Pakistanis who we are fighting in Bajaur and why. Explain who the terrorists in Waziristan are. Unmask the sectarian hate-mongers in Khyber and Kurram. Use graphs and videos and numbers and pictures to expose the ugliness and hate that is spreading amongst us. The shadowy elements in the state apparatus will strike back. But they are no longer the real terror — the terrorists they have long since lost control of are.

And squeeze the Americans for more aid. The Americans have given us a few hundred million to upgrade our F-16s. With great fanfare, they have also given us 11,000 tons of wheat. Some perspective: our annual wheat requirement is 23 million tons; we are importing two and a half million tons. This is a joke. Get something meaningful from the US. Bring the country money. Bring it fuel. Bring it a plan. Help the poor. Do something. Anything. Husain Haqqani and Mahmud Durrani owe their jobs to the fact that the Americans trust them — but what use is that trust if it earns us nothing? ‘Us’ being regular Pakistanis, not the PPP elite or the establishment.

By now Zardari’s plan has revealed itself and it is wretchedly familiar: the consolidation of power. The trenches are being dug in Punjab rather than Waziristan. If someone dares, he should whisper into his ear: what’s the point of consolidating power if you’ll end up presiding over the burned-out shell of a country?

cyril.a@gmail.com

Institutions, not saviours

AS a nation we have been forever blessed by new saviours and rescuers to whom we have looked up with faith, trusting them to pull the Pakistani ship out of murky waters.

It is a national characteristic that we attribute prophetic qualities to them to give them a flawless image. Unfortunately, they prove nothing beyond the mediocre, lapping up the attentions of sycophants including toady sections of the media and public.

Perhaps this is telling of the lack of education in our society or our collective attachment to cultural attitudes of yore when our forefathers looked to mighty conquerors and despots to provide solutions to their problems. Maybe, it is this attachment which always propels us Pakistanis to look for safety and leadership in these sultans of modern times. The result? Instead of demanding concrete institution-building, we waste years admiring one saviour after the other.

The latest of these was Gen Musharraf who was welcomed by the elite and masses alike. His seven-point agenda was to lift this nation out of gloom and desolation. But he left us totally incapacitated and impotent. He promised us systems; what we got was a one-man show and a one-man establishment. His intervention was required at extremely micro levels such as the Oval dressing room drama when our team refused to come out to play. There is no bigger addiction than power as exemplified by the general when he became convinced of his destiny and decided to grace us with his continued presence through fake referendums, manipulated elections, criminal amendments to the constitution etc.

It was not altogether Musharraf’s fault. We as a nation along with our political elite and the media to some extent did convince him of his greatness, majesty and his role in determining this nation’s destiny. Neither was this the first time. After the departures of Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, virtually every ruler has been hailed as the true liberator of the masses, even Governor-General Ghulam Muhammed whose abilities as a leader can be seriously challenged.

Ayub Khan, our first blessing in terms of military rulers, was also hailed as a reformer on his arrival. Again, the focus was essentially on staying in power be it through the mutilation of the constitution, bogus elections or the establishment of the King’s party.

Our loss of East Pakistan, while neatly executed by Sheikh Mujeeb, Bhutto and Yahya, had its roots in the Ayub era. While overwhelmingly aware of the situation and the sense of deprivation among the East Pakistanis, he could do nothing concrete to ease their many concerns. His diaries give the impression that he had given up on the Bengalis much before 1971.

Unfortunately, our reformers have fallen in love with their thrones and have focused solely on the extension of their stay in the corridors of power. Nobody has ever quit without being shown the door. The country has seen few democratically elected rulers, among them Bhutto and Sharif. Both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif became convinced that this country needed their perpetual rule be it through Islamic socialism or their own school of Sharia, eventually losing sight of their promise to strengthen institutions. Both were deposed by their chosen military chiefs.

A core requirement of this country is to move away from individuals and so called charismatic leaders to strong institutions. The following are essential to establishing sustainable institution:

There should be a truly independent election commission. The whole nation has to have confidence in this institution. Fair and transparent elections are the basic check for democratic transitions. Unless the masses have faith in this institution and its ability to hold free elections, democracy and development will never progress.

A neutral judiciary should follow the events of March last year. We need a respectable and dignified judicial bench that is neither subservient to the rulers nor a mere symbol of judicial activism.

An active Council of Common Interests must be fully activated and empowered to ensure that all stakeholders in the national arena are completely involved in national development. This is vital to eliminating a sense of deprivation in any segment of society.

Active parliamentary committees have a very important role to play in the development of a democratic culture. They need to be empowered and strengthened.

The PPP owes it to the nation to move the cycle of governance from individuals to institutions. What it could not accomplish previously must be done so now. There is neither a Ghulam Ishaq Khan nor a Mirza Aslam Beg in sight. The very apolitical army chief and party’s chairman in the presidency should take care of any excuses. Asif Zardari’s twin roles of party chairmanship and as the head of state remain critical. It has to be seen whether he changes the direction of the Pakistani ship and moves towards institutions that outlive their creators or attempts to become yet another ‘liberator’ of Pakistan.

hfaraz@yahoo.com

Too many failures

“THE primary duty of a state is to protect the life and property of its people,” said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the day after the Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad.

The hotel’s private security was clearly in place, but where was our state’s security? Marriott’s security did not let the explosive-laden truck enter its premises. The 59-by-24-foot crater outside the hotel’s gates suggests as much. The truck was carrying 600 kg of TNT and RDX explosives. This heavy-duty vehicle managed to make its way through the city limits all the way to the gate of the hotel. The Maghrib call to prayer was probably resonating across the city, when this truck entered the capital which is undergoing massive construction and bans the movement of construction trucks during the day. This rule is relaxed after sunset. The interior ministry has said the vehicle responsible for the Marriott bombing disguised itself as a construction ‘dumper truck’.

As this explosives-laden truck made its way through F-6, a highly fortified area, it must have crossed bunkers and security check posts. Yet, it managed to escape the scrutiny of security personnel. According to Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, they were probably distracted by a post-iftar smoke or cup of tea.

At a press conference releasing initial investigation reports, the prime minister’s interior advisor, Rehman Malik, said a traffic police officer grew suspicious of the vehicle and radioed in a security check request. Despite this request, the truck made its way to the Marriott gates. Yet, Prime Minister Gilani maintained, “You cannot call this a security lapse.”

Then maybe it was an intelligence lapse?

During his press conference, Rehman Malik also released Marriott’s CCTV footage, which shows the truck ramming into the hotel’s security cordon. The footage reveals security guards rushing to the vehicle. A minute later, a minor explosion takes place and fire starts to rise from the truck. A security guard attempts to put out the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher. Then a larger explosion takes place. The footage ends. This whole event took about three to four minutes; the whole time traffic continued to flow on the main road.

Security had been beefed up across the city for Zardari’s maiden address to parliament. Rehman Malik said major security precautions were taken after they received information that the parliament could possibly be a target. In fact he lauded the day as a security success. Some analysts have suggested that the perpetrators turned to the Marriott as a secondary target after they failed to make any headway in entering the vicinity of the parliament. But Rehman Malik maintains that the Marriott was their primary target and the TNT- and RDX-laden truck could only enter the city limits after sunset. (According to him, the political leaders, including the president and prime minister, were the intended targets as they had originally planned to have iftar at the Marriott before shifting the venue — a point refuted by the hotel management.)

So maybe they did not have a credible tip-off regarding the location and time of the attack. What about the 600 kg of explosives? This is not the kind of material you can obtain easily. TNT is available commercially in blocks at a maximum weight of 20 kg. Using that example, this explosion required the purchase and logistic transport of 30 blocks. Why didn’t our intelligence agencies get a sniff of this transaction and movement? This is where there was a massive intelligence failure. Can we hope for a policy change?

Around 600 kg of TNT and RDX were used, along with mortar, ball bearings and aluminium powder. The de facto interior minister blames ‘aluminum powder’ for stoking the fire that caused temperatures in the hotel to reach 400 degrees Centigrade and took the authorities 13 hours to control.

Live coverage of the blast showed a man and women waving and crying out for help from a smoke-filled balcony on the fourth floor. They were never rescued. The CDA’s emergency response did not have the equipment, ladders or slides to whisk them to safety. Their bodies were recovered the following morning and identified as the Czech envoy to Pakistan and his female companion.

The government has come to the conclusion that the CDA’s infrastructure is inadequate. Islamabad’s development authority has been spending more money on gardening than on security. The organisation reportedly employs 16,000 gardeners. If only they put that kind of manpower into security or rescue teams. Rescue teams did fly in from all over the country but most could not enter the building until the fire was put out

While Marriott was under assault, the country’s powerful were together celebrating the success of President Asif Ali Zardari’s first address to parliament. Rehman Malik said that the military chiefs and leaders decided then and there to come up with standard operating procedures for such situations.

The interior ministry did reveal plans of implementing a massive CCTV system in all major cities of Pakistan. This is a good first step. But policymakers also need to get over the belief that “there is no way of fighting a suicide bomber”. Other countries like Israel and Sri Lanka have effectively brought down their numbers through stringent policy decisions.

It is these kinds of decisions that Marriott owner Sadruddin Hashwani wants regarding the hotel’s private security. The morning after the blast, he said, “If I was there I would have killed him, but anyway, unfortunately they didn’t kill him. Inshallah, in the future we will have more trained people.”

Indeed, if there was a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in place and the suicide bomber was taken out when the truck initially collided with the Marriott’s security barrier, the incident could have been avoided. The hotel’s CCTV footage revealed that there was about a minute between the collision and the initial explosion. Shoot-to-kill tactics were allegedly enforced by the anti-terrorist branch of London’s Metropolitan Police after 9/11 in consultation with the Israeli and Sri Lankan law-enforcement agencies regarding the response to “deadly and determined” attackers. The policy was only been put in place once after the 7/7 bombings, and led to the shooting of an innocent Brazilian.

Shoot-to-kill policies are controversial, and human error can lead to the loss of innocent lives. But given the number of suicide bombings our country now faces, these could also help government save hundreds, even thousands, of innocent lives.