Proactive approach

Published January 9, 2015
The writer is a former federal secretary interior.
The writer is a former federal secretary interior.

IT took the massacre of over 130 children in a fortified school in the cantonment of a provincial capital, to shake the rulers out of their slumber. Earlier, when around 60 people were killed during the Wagah border ceremony, or almost a hundred died in an attack on a church in Peshawar, the government limited itself to statements of condemnation.

Actions by the government during the last three weeks, involving long in-house meetings, multi-party conferences and formations of sub-committees, indicate that the rulers finally think that the issue is serious this time. While planning seems to be complete, and consensus on a 20-point action plan drafted by an experts’ committee – to which this writer was also invited – and military courts has been achieved, the actual action is yet to start.

No tough initiatives have so far been taken, except lifting the moratorium on the death penalty and decision on military courts, both of which were on the firm advice of the military. While enhancing security of schools is an immediate need, it is a defensive action nevertheless. Unless the battle is taken to the terrorists through offensive action, long-term peace cannot be achieved. We have been postponing firm action for fear of retaliation for too long.

In 2003, as interior secretary I had prepared a plan to relocate all madressahs out of Islamabad and then through coordinated police action move the students to their new premises. But the reaction of the rulers was not receptive.


The antidote for militancy is the police.


No regime wants to rock the boat. Everyone wants to get through their tenure without making waves, regardless of how much damage such neglect may do in the long run.

Hanging convicts is symbolic, but immediate intelligence-based pre-emptive strikes all over the country, especially in the urban areas where the majority of sleeper and active cells exist, are the need of the hour.

The Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 is a tool which allows the government to list all those involved in terrorism, including facilitators and financiers, as well as such people who are suspected of being involved in terrorism but who may not have yet committed an overt act. Once a person has been placed on this schedule, he can be asked to report to the police station periodically, his movements can be monitored, his accounts can be checked and his communications can be scrutinised.

The government needs to neutralise such elements by putting them on the Fourth Schedule or by placing them in preventive detention. While action on the 20-point National Action Plan needs to be started without further dithering, the one thing that will indicate the resolve of the government is the allocation of a large sum of money (say Rs50-100 billion) to show that the state is putting its money where its mouth is.

While the military and paramilitary bodies have a shock-and-awe effect, the actual antidote for the terrorists in society is the police.

But the police, unfortunately, in all provinces, except perhaps Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is demoralised because of political interference and incapacitated because of lack of funds. The majority of police stations in the country don’t have the resources to even maintain their premises or put fuel in their vehicles. The database of criminals is still maintained manually, despite launching of a number of computerisation schemes. A scheme for a countrywide database of crime/criminals started in 2003, funded by USAID, having a database of 1.9 million; but it lies abandoned since 2010 for want of funds.

A scheme called PROMIS involving computerisation of all crime registers of police stations was launched some 10 years back but remains ineffective, partly because there are no funds and partly due to frequent transfers of focal persons responsible to drive such initiatives.

A Special Investigation Group (SIG) in the FIA, created in 2003, where foreign experts taught a select group of policemen/officers the latest investigation techniques, and were supplied with state-of-the-art equipment for crime scene investigation, has atrophied.

The battle against terrorism is not going to be fought in the Prime Minister House or in the halls where multi-party conferences are held. Nor is it going to be fought by experts on talk shows. It is going to be fought in the mundane, boring, unglamorous rooms of police stations, which need support, encouragement and funds from the government. The time has come for our politicians to leave the police alone and appoint competent senior officers to command their force.

Ever since the demise of the nazim-led local government system, the districts are without a central command responsible for law and order. While the police are trained to act after the crime has occurred, things like controlling hate literature, misuse of loudspeakers and monitoring of preachers used to be done by the executive magistracy. This tool needs to be reactivated.

The writer is a former federal secretary interior.

tasneem.m.noorani@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2015

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