Spreading calculated anarchy
Business in any country thrives in an era of internal peace. Commerce and Industry register real gains during periods of calm and quiet. Law and order problems are an anathema to the business community. Other than physical dislocations, the psychological impact forces (1) money and (2) entrepreneurial skills to take wings, in that order. Money may be retrievable, the loss of entrepreneurial skills leaves more lasting damage to the economy.
For the past several years, Karachi has been beset with internal security problems that have increasingly and directly affected the business community. Seen earlier as a general breakdown of law and order with special emphasis on bank hold-ups, there has been a targeted increase of kidnappings of prominent members of the mercantile community and their scions, causing deep insecurity and despondency in commercial circles in Karachi. More than monetary considerations seem to be behind the kidnappings, more of a vested motivation of the geo-political kind. This can be seen in the lifting of Bashir Jan Mohammad, former President of the Karachi Stock Exchange and a very prominent member of Pakistan’s business community. It is also illustrated by the kidnapping of the nephew of Mr. S.M. Muneer, Vice-President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FPCCI). But the most shocking was the spiriting away of the son of Mr. I.A. Hanif, Governor, State Bank of Pakistan on September 17, 1990. A number of other kidnappings have taken place, the signature of each operation has been strikingly similar. While one does believe in coincidences, the targets have been meticulously chosen and the execution of each exercise has been done with military precision. Kidnapping is the most difficult of terrorist acts, involving logistics of various nature that is beyond the capacity of the normal law breaker. With all due respect, holding up people on a highway may be good enough for our centuries and traditional highwaymen, but to intercept a person in broad daylight and speed off with him from metropolitan areas is beyond their capacity to carry on a sustained basis, no offence meant to their egos.
We have to ask ourselves why this is happening and why it is happening now? Is money the only object or is that part of the cover plan for some greater objective? The spread of creeping anarchy in this city leads to only one conclusive result, the destruction of the economy of Karachi. Given Karachi’s importance as the only port city of Pakistan, the rest just adds up. The businessmen of Karachi are being used as unfortunate pawns in a greater game, sabotage of the economy of Pakistan. The targets have been increasingly chosen more for their media potential rather than their capacity to pay. How better to bring Pakistan down to its knees? The internal Sindh card seems to have more or less failed, a question of wrong timing, rather than that of ruthless performance. It seems there is now a targeted effort to go for the jugular vein, to emasculate Karachi.
The question arises who is behind this orchestrated campaign to render Pakistan economically weak and thus unable to defend herself militarily? Except for India and Afghanistan very few nations wish us that much ill. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein probably also does, but he has his hands full at this time. While Afghanistan’s WAD has the capacity to explode bombs here and there and can probably provide the logistics to some extent e.g., safe houses, personnel, underground contacts, etc., it is the Indians who have more nefarious intentions. At this time, because of Kashmir and Khalistan (Indian Occupied Kashmir and Punjab respectively), the Indians are hard pressed in counter-guerilla operations and it is in the fitness of things that they would be very interested in destabilising Pakistan at any and all costs. In tandem with other efforts they have been infiltrating RAW (Research and Analytical Wings) agents into Pakistan, particularly Sindh. It is no mean coincidence that the chief organiser of India’s RAW-led terrorist campaign in Sri Lanka, which led to the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord for the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force’s entry into Sri Lanka, is now India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, J.N. Dixit. This man was India’s (High Commissioner) Pro-Consul in Colombo during the period IPKF remained in Sri Lanka. Why has he been sent to Pakistan, to shower us with rose petals?
One should not doubt for an instant that the present wave of lawlessness is Indian-inspired, it is viciously motivated with great hatred and ill will for Pakistan. While there is really only one answer to it, to reciprocate in kind, diplomatic niceties restrain us from taking direct covert action. At the very least we should immediately close down the Indian Consulate General in Karachi as this is the hub of anti-Pakistan propaganda in Sindh. Why do we tolerate this den of mischief in the absence of our reciprocal Consulate-General in Bombay? The amount of anti-Pakistan propaganda disseminated by Mr Tripathi defies description. At the very least, the people of Karachi should refuse to attend the functions of the Indian Consulate-General as a protest to the brutality and killings in Kashmir. We have to make bold moves to stop our house from burning. If the business community shifts its interest from Karachi, it will mean doomsday for this city, a socio-economic disaster with similar ramifications for the whole country.
The Sindh Police have failed. It is no use laying all the blame at their door for their efforts have been hopelessly compromised by many factors, e.g., lack of trained manpower and equipment, inadequate service conditions, leakage of information, widespread corruption, political interference, etc. An image forms of unfairly asking them to do a job with their hands tied behind their backs. They are neither materially nor morally equipped at this time to perform a law enforcement and interdiction role, however, in their defence one must say that they have coped in the circumstances much better than anticipated or expected. While they must be the ultimate arbiters of law enforcement, at this time Pakistan’s economic existence requires the employment of draconian measures. Sindh Police and other law enforcement agencies must have time to reorganise and restructure their role to useful employment and the only way to do this immediately is to bring in additional trained manpower having police authority under anti-terrorist laws, thereafter to replace them with an adequately trained and equipped police unit.
An elite force must be created on the pattern of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams in the USA. There was once an effort to have such specialist squads in Karachi, the Eagle Squads simply could not come up to the mark because of ill-motivated recruitment policies and haphazard training thereof. On the contrary, some of the Eagle Squad were themselves found involved in dacoities, such were the morals of the leadership. For the interim, it is recommended that 500 men (all volunteers) be taken from the SSG and (in order not to denude the SSG) from Infantry Commando Platoons. This elite unit should be given training on a crash programme over urban guerilla warfare in a space of 2-3 weeks, then attached to the Inspector-General of Sindh Police to be used under his direct control (and not through any deputed police officer) under a broad mandate given to the Commander of this Elite Force to intercept, attack and destroy the personnel and hide-outs of the lawless elements, at will. They should have full police powers and given the authority to incorporate such police personnel as may be necessary, even at the spur of the moment, to facilitate their operations.
This force of 500 men should be commanded by a Brigadier or Colonel, having their own independent logistics and command structure, a HQs company (100 men) with their own intelligence sub-unit, data processing section, etc., and four SWAT companies of 100 men. Each SWAT company should be commanded by a Major with HQs element of 10 men and 9 sections of 10 men, each section commanded by a Subaltern/Captain. The intelligence unit in the HQs Company must have access to all intelligence data available with the Provincial Special Branch, Crime Branch, CIA, local branches of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI), Pakistan Coast Guards, Narcotics Control Authority, etc. They should have complete powers to go through the Income Tax records of all individuals, corporate bodies, banking transactions of all the scheduled banks, etc. Special Magistrates must be attached to them for summary adjudication and cases brought by them must be conducted in front of special tribunals. They should have the right of detention of personnel on suspicion, seizure of assets and the authority of blow up locations used as safe-houses and hide-outs by the lawless elements. Unless you make the deterrent effective the recalcitrants are going to laugh in the faces of the law enforcement agencies. This elite force must go in a big way for the lawless, no place should be left safe for them, the general public must be encouraged to phone in tips, those who chose not to remain anonymous must even be rewarded discreetly.
There is certainly a price to all this, accidental casualties among innocent citizen and the loss of individual confidentiality to an extent. But if the world’s greatest democracy, USA could turn to SWAT teams to rid their cities from urban terrorists, then we must gear from ourselves to pay the price whatever the cost. Unless and until we take the war onto the lawless elements we shall be forced ever-deeper onto the defensive. What are the methods employed by the British in operating in Northern Ireland? With the breakdown of law and order, a creeping anarchy is coming into the body economic of Pakistan. Unless the democratic structure enforces a strict regimen ultimately the cost may be democracy itself as authoritarian methods lead to establishment of a more permanent system, serving to replace the present democratic system to rectify the situation. At the same time there is a tremendous demoralisation of the masses as well as among the hard-core business community to which the cost factor is impossible to fathom. To our liberal-minded intelligentsia who may oppose draconian measures, one has only question, do you feel confident about sending your children to schools and colleges daily?
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