Dec 16 was a day of grief for many reasons. For 43 years we spent the day in gloom remembering the abject surrender in East Pakistan in 1971. On Dec 16, 2014, something so horrible happened that words alone cannot describe it, the APS Peshawar incident brought home to the people of Pakistan the brutal mindset of the terrorism in graphic detail. More than anything it unified the people’s resolve to eradicate the scourge of terrorism. All over the country rallies and vigils marked this day of infamy.
Terrorist groups need arms and money, motivated by ideology and criminals by greed, their linkages include money-laundering, fabricating passport and identification documents, providing safe houses, supplying explosives, etc. Successfully infiltrating into the higher reaches of government itself in Pakistan, and circumventing the rule of law, the nexus between corruption, organized crime and terrorism has become the rule of law itself. The impasse deliberately created by the Sindh Govt by filibustering extending period the powers given to the Rangers to operate in Karachi so blatantly exposes this.
Huge amounts of money channelled into three concentric spheres support necessary logistics for terrorism: e.g., explosives, hideouts, travel and the search and observation of soft vulnerable targets. The consequences of this funding are death and murder. The terrorists in the inner-most circle are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, religious personalities, etc., serving as their infrastructure. The third circle is made up of religious, educational and welfare organisations, some inadvertently and some under pressure. In this tunnel vision, democracy is unthinkable.
With due respects to the Honourable Superior Court judges, in being deliberate about dispensing justice they have inadvertently allowed crime to flourish. To understand how criminals function in the name of law, consider the political luminaries and bureaucrats involved many cases increased. The intelligentsia and the public is blissfully unaware of and/or indifferent to the activities of the parallel society outside the control of the government and its nexus between illegal underworld and the economics of parallel illegal markets. Dr. Asim Hussain’s case has brought this out in graphic detail.
Terrorism cannot function without “Organized Crime” and organized crime, which provides couriers smuggling drugs, arms and human beings across the countries and regions, cannot function without corruption and money earned from drug trafficking. Illicit operations like drugs trade and criminal activity render militant cells more vulnerable to detection. Remedial measures include improving police capability to locate and disrupt criminal networks. But what happens when officials of the police become directly involved in fostering corruption and organized crime. Whether Dr. Asim Hussain is guilty or not is a moot point, that DSP Altaf Hussain of Sindh Police exonerated him in record time while destroying evidence is! Can a military court try this policeman for abetting crime and being accessory after the fact? It is not possible to enforce the rule of law by following the rule of law in a totally lawless environment.
We have blurred the distinction between religion and nationalism. We adopted a “divide and rule” policy within Pakistan politics. Those who incite ethnic and/or sectarian violence should also receive the maximum penalty. Those directly connected to the perpetrators and those giving indirect assistance to them must be targeted, with close monitoring of funds ostensibly meant for charity. Terrorist funding comes through foreign exchange dealers and “havalas”, only electronic processing through scheduled banks that will give both origin and rampant without doubt will stop the flow.
The civilised world still has illusions that it is possible to enforce the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. No country has a law against cannibals eating citizens because such an act would be unthinkable, but it is time the world evaluated options of bringing the unthinkable into the statute books. Efforts to counter terrorism need creation and development of successive layers of defence against corruption and organised crime. Among the required capabilities will be the ability to: (1) detect people organised in terrorist activity and identify them, and have the capability of simultaneously monitoring their movements; (2) detect the money trail and the supply sources of explosive materials likely to be used: after all, the terrorists have to procure it from somewhere; (3) mobilise one’s defence capability to recognise and counter specific threats; (4) mobilise adequate and coordinated intelligence capability, utilising both human and electronic intelligence; (5) focus on air, sea, rail and road travel as potential terror targets; (6) guard the country’s frontiers: this may involve monitoring and observation of thousands of miles of borders; (7) those connected directly to the perpetrators and those who indirectly give sustenance must be targeted.
Countering Terrorism is presently beyond their capacity of an law enforcement agencies. A fully equipped independent force mandated to fight terrorism within the country, a Counter-Terrorism Force (CTF) must have its own personnel, equipment, mobility and intelligence potential drawn from the armed forces, law enforcement agencies, the customs and paramilitary forces. The proposed CTF should be developed on the pattern of the tremendously successful Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) that almost eliminated poppy cultivation and drug smuggling. The nucleus of the ANF’s existing administrative, operational and intelligence structure can easily be converted into the CTF. Well aware that the CTF will cut into their corruption and, by default, organised crime, will the politicians ever want a CTF? And without a dedicated CTF we will conceivably keep on fighting terrorism for another hundred years.
A terrorist uses a cause to justify his motives, the difference is that he mostly targets non-combatants with maximum prejudice as he did in the APS Peshawar incident. The mindset of a terrorist is that of a murderer, both callous and brutal. The commitment, will and determination of the “great silent majority” to fight this murderous criminal mindset can only be aroused by giving them participation with power at the grassroots level. Local Bodies elections have been held, a mockery of democracy has been displayed by their powers being drastically curtailed so that they are toothless entities. As we are seeing in Sindh today, the political compulsions of the elected representatives force them to (a) deny acknowledging the obvious (b) shift all the blame for the terrorism on the warped ideology of its perpetrators instead of coping with the root causes and (c) passing on the buck even when prima-facie the evidence is credible. Such an attitude does not bode well for democracy.
The brutal terrorist act of Dec 16, 2014 woke up the nation, this we will never forget. The real question is, when will our rulers ever learn?
