THE police face multiple threats in Karachi as they are targets for criminal gangs, political militants as well as religious and sectarian terrorists. While a large number of policemen have fallen victim to targeted killings, bombings, such as the one carried out yesterday morning outside the Razzakabad police training facility, have been rare. A number of police personnel were killed in the blast; reports indicate an explosives-laden vehicle hit a bus which was taking the law enforcers to work. There is some confusion whether it was a suicide blast or caused by a remote-controlled device, but the outlawed Pakistani Taliban have claimed they carried out the attack to avenge the ‘targeted killing’ of their members in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. While such attacks serve to demoralise the police, they also add to people’s sense of insecurity. Citizens worry that if the law enforcers cannot defend themselves then how can the public expect to be protected. Yet such attacks do not come as a surprise given the wave of terrorism that has engulfed Pakistan, as well as the police’s leading role in carrying out targeted operations in Karachi. The real question concerns what the state is doing to thwart these attacks.

Over the past few years, the police have been in the line of fire all over Pakistan. TTP-linked militants overran the police training academy in Manawan, Lahore in 2009 while police personnel are regularly targeted in KP, mostly by extremist militants who deploy suicide bombers and IEDs as their weapons of choice. At one level, improving security around police facilities can help; for example, most police facilities in Karachi are believed to have very poor security. There is also the question of alertness. Reports indicate the vehicle involved in the Razzakabad blast was parked outside the facility for approximately half an hour. Why did no one notice the presence of the vehicle? But at a deeper level, attacks targeting law enforcers can only be prevented by improving intelligence-gathering capabilities. When it comes to both the preventive aspect as well as follow-up investigations into acts of terrorism, our law-enforcement agencies are failing. The result is the continuous loss of life of both civilians and those in uniform.