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AFTER seven cops were killed in Karachi the other day, the usual condolences and prayers were offered, and we have already moved on.
A week or so ago, another six were killed by gangsters in the Rajanpur face-off in southern Punjab. Their deaths were quickly buried under the media coverage of the army operation in the area. In the same disastrous attempt to neutralise the Chotoo gang, 24 cops had also been captured.
In Karachi, hundreds of policemen have been murdered in broad daylight over the last four years. So common are these deaths that unless it’s a particularly bloody incident, they seldom make the front pages or the breaking news on TV. And of late, Rangers patrolling Karachi’s streets are being similarly targeted.
Policing Karachi, a city of 20 million, is no easy task.
While earlier, MQM hitmen were widely suspected of carrying out this bloody campaign, now it’s the jihadists of various stripes. So despite the ongoing Rangers-led operation to clean up Karachi, and the many staged encounters that have eliminated suspected militants, it would appear that the city has become a vast nest of vipers where Islamist militants can pick off cops and Rangers at will.
Clearly, our well-resourced intelligence agencies have failed at penetrating and identifying these groups and their hideouts. According to forensic evidence, the weapons used to kill the seven cops in Orangi were also employed in the killing of over a score of victims over the last two years. The gang remains untraced.
Obviously, policing a city of 20 million is no easy task, especially with only around 25,000 policemen available. Out of these, nearly a third are assigned to protect public buildings and so-called VIPs. And even those who are supposed to protect us are poorly trained, underequipped and paid peanuts for risking their lives every day.
It is true that the public has a very poor perception of our police for their corruption and incompetence. At independence, we inherited a force that was trained to protect the colonial state, and not ordinary citizens. Since then, its orientation has not changed.
Despite three decades of militancy in Karachi, successive governments have been unable to train and equip an effective force to tackle this menace. With good reason, our cops are demoralised, serving under a rotten provincial administration. All too often, they have to pay bribes to get inducted into the force. So once they don their uniforms, there is every incentive for corruption to recover their investment.
Even Punjab, with a far better track record in governance than Sindh, has yet to put a modern, effective training programme in place for its police. Witness the fiasco at Rajanpur: according to media reports, the ill-prepared attack on the gang’s stronghold was launched when the inspector general declared to his subordinates that he would go in alone if they were too scared.
This taunt apparently had its desired effect, and the policemen walked into an ambush that saw six killed and 24 taken prisoner. I hope the Punjab government will launch an inquiry into this debacle. However, this will not solve the problem of inadequate training and equipment.
I have asked friends who have served as senior police officers in Sindh why, after all these years, we have been unable to modernise our police force. Almost invariably, they have complained about a lack of funds. And yet, they drive around in expensive official cars and off-road vehicles. Clearly, no shortage of funds at the senior level.
It is true that our abysmal education system does not help in recruiting policemen capable of absorbing new techniques. And yet, the armed forces have the same human resources to work with, and manage to train them to professional standards. So clearly, there is a lack of motivation among those responsible for training our police force.
In the years since 9/11, most Western countries have beefed up their anti-terrorism legislation and security forces. As a result, relatively few terrorists have carried out successful attacks. Nevertheless, the recent jihadist atrocities in California, Paris and Brussels show us that determined terrorists can still strike from time to time.
And unlike our courts, judges in the West show absolutely no leniency in terror-related cases. Those planning attacks as well as those supporting jihadi ideology are swiftly sentenced. There is little sympathy for anybody remotely connected to a terror plot, unlike here where many judges, politicians, generals and cops do have a soft spot for extremist views.
Apart from denying citizens the security they are entitled to, an inadequate police force also encourages the army to play a role it was never intended for. Thus, after the fiasco at Rajanpur, soldiers had to go in to clean out Chotoo’s stronghold. Similarly, the Rangers are out in Karachi to perform what are basically policing duties.
This is bad for an already overstretched army, and worse for a fragile democracy. The sooner our leaders get serious about modernising our police force, the better.
Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2016
