In implementing the National Action Plan against terrorism and extremism, the Punjab police are engaged in a province-wide campaign against the display of weapons in public and dissemination of sectarian hatred from the pulpit and through books. Though late - perhaps very late - it is good that the PML-N leadership has woken up to the menace that had been wreaking havoc on the society for decades.

Since the crackdown started in Rawalpindi last week, the police have arrested 15 people in 20 cases of violation of the Amplifier Act. And three booksellers were hauled up on Thursday for keeping hateful sectarian literature for sale.

However, some officers have found enforcing the ban on carrying of arms in public rather ticklish. They say it is so because the law requires the police to arrest those violating the ban but does not give them the power to check whether the arms license a violator produces is genuine or a fake.

“It is an unproductive exercise,” said a senior police officer. “If display of arms in public is to be discouraged, a single authority should have the power to issue an arms licence and to revoke it in case of the violation of the law - like the traffic police do with the driving licence holders.”

Similarly, he did not think the campaign against hate material would succeed unless the authorities crack down on those producing and printing such material.

Hate material disseminated in facsimile form and through the digital networks would still remain beyond the capabilities of the poorly-equipped police.

Akhtar Umar Hayat Laleka, Regional Police Officer Rawalpindi, appeared to be conscious of such obstacles in fighting the terror monster when he suggested that the government consider stiffening the punishment for the offences the police have been asked to control.

Light sentences do not discourage the lawbreakers, whether it is violating the ban on spreading sectarian hatred from the pulpit or through wall chalking.

AIG Laleka, however, says the campaign in Rawalpindi against lawbreakers has been intensified and is “going on successfully.”

That said, the secret police and the civil intelligence agencies remain the mainstay of watching and dismantling the terrorist and criminal networks in the country.

The Special Branch of the police and the intelligence agencies have been regularly reporting for years the clerics and others whose sermons and activities violated laws – much before the legislation that created military courts.

Multiple groups, some of them suspects in the eyes of police for long, run a vast mosque-madressah-social welfare network in Punjab.

Only the other day, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan informed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that there were 95 extremist and militant outfits operating in the province when nationally only 72 such groups had been proscribed.

In Faisalabad region, SP Arif Shahbaz Khan of Jaranwala has set an example by involving retired police officers in what many call “the battle for survival”. Of the 140 retired officers he approached, 80 responded enthusiastically to activate community policing in the region.

People at large fervently hope that this time the rulers really go after the terrorists and the mindset that drives them.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2015

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