Terrorism, Law and Order

Publisher and Managing Editor IKRAM SEHGAL examines the nexus between terrorism, law and order

The perception of terror was previously the domain of the unknown, of animals in the jungle, of spirits in the night. Today, at the fag end of the 20th century, advancement in science and technology has force-multiplied terror as a deliberate creation of man to psychologically overwhelm the focus of his adverse attention with fear. What to talk about individuals and communities, entire nations can now be held hostage to terror. Even more than drugs and nuclear proliferation, terrorism is the subject of major attention of civilized society. Leaders of the countries apprehensive of being the major targets of terrorism met after the assassination of Israeli PM Rabin in an extraordinary session, followed very recently by the security ministers of the same countries after the downing bombing of TWA Flight 800 out of JFK and the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics. Terrorism is a potent weapon for those who lack numbers, weaponry and money, the security environment in a host of countries is now braced with anticipation of terrorist strikes. High tech equipment is being rapidly outdated as sophisticated terrorists find ways to circumvent them. Increasingly terrorists are targeting soft targets, the forces of law and order are in disarray, finding themselves unable to cope with the variations in the threat perception, the level and the mode thereof.

To quote my article ‘COMBATING URBAN TERRORISM’ in THE NATION dated October 05, 1995

‘No civilized society can afford to stand by and allow urban guerrilla warfare to be waged in its streets, the problem arises in the escalating level of response that is considered enough to contain the terrorism. A friend of mine in the LEAs maintains that the only way to counter terror is by terror. The Superpowers followed the same balancing act in a far different canvas in the practice of nuclear détente, ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ or MAD. In combating urban terrorism, psychological warfare is used to alienate the population from terrorists but this is a double-edged weapon that may well backfire if not accompanied by socio-economic measures. In Northern Ireland, British SAS undercover agents instilled a balance of terror among the urban population rivalling that of IRA gunmen, safe havens among the urban population therefore became that much scarce. The British Government always followed a two track ‘carrot and stick’ policy, containing social, political and economic initiatives for the people of Northern Ireland. When political activism reaches a point of frustration, elements that lose patience turn to violent protest that disrupts civil life and thus stable government. Today in Bangladesh we see a classic case of political activism turn to militancy to voice their mass protest. However this is far removed from the stage of urban terrorism in vogue in Karachi. Unfortunately while reserving for themselves their democratic right to protest, street mobs tend to violently oppose the democratic right of others not to protest, street mobs tend to violently oppose the democratic right of others not to protest, a classic case of double standards. When peaceful protest turns violent to obtain objectives, democracy’s principles are violated in the name of upholding the principles. At the same time, one cannot condone the extraordinary use of force by the Administration that may by itself provoke violent protest, even punishment for murder is scaled down if it takes place due to grave provocation. While not really a norm of a civilized and democratic society, political militancy that forsakes the use of weapons to enforce its aims and objectives remains within acceptable parameters, as in Bangladesh’.

The ugly face of terror appeared fully in Pakistan with the advent of the Afghan War in the early 80s as the Communist-led regime in Kabul countered Pakistan’s support for the MUJAHIDEEN by a spate of bombings in the major urban cities of Pakistan, particularly public market places, transportation modes and its nodal points, a coward’s way of inflicting the most damage on innocent non-combatants. The Al-Zulfikar movement was initially funded and trained by Khan, the Afghan security agency, followed almost simultaneously by India’s Research and Analytical Wing or as it is better known by its Acronym RAW, in turn these were trained and coordinated by the KGB, primary raison d’etre being to export bloody terrorism to the perceived enemies of their respective governments. During the 80s the KGB, ably supported by KHAD and RAW, were carrying out a relentless terrorist campaign against Pakistan through many splinter militant groups of political parties inimical to the Zia Regime, Al-Zulfikar being in the forefront with primary bases in Afghanistan and India and secondary bases in Syria and Libya. An example of terror running amok is the turning of the Sri Lankan island of paradise into hell-on-earth through the RAW trained and funded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Prabhakaran is not the first RAW creation to turn on RAW, Bhindranawala preceded him as did many others not as well known in the other states of the Indian Union.

To quote my article ‘A CITY WITHOUT LEADERSHIP’ in THE NATION dated March 09, 1995.

‘One of the major lessons of Vietnam and Afghanistan was that military means usually cause great casualties and massive destruction but can never overcome the will of the people. Another fact to emerge was that as the violence escalates, all enforcement agencies, military, civil or para-military, universally keep asking for more men and material to overcome the problem at hand till one day they themselves become a State within a State and thus the greater problem. What do Armoured Personnel Carriers in the city’s posh areas as a ‘show of force’ accomplish? Will they serve to scare hardened terrorists from striking mercilessly at random at places and times of their choosing (and thus act as a deterrent) or by this show of face do they simply instill terror in the hearts of the innocent populace they are supposed to protect? For that matter, what do bunkers achieve? For professional soldiers, bunkers as a symbol of Maginot Line immobility that is anathema to the concept of urban warfare where mobility must be the only logic. Except for the necessity of guarding vital installations bunkers exist only as symbols of the impotence of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to enforce the law. In essence, the LEAs adopt a defensive posture, they accept that instead of taking the initiative they can at best only react’.

What better model to take for governance countering terrorism than the city of Karachi. As the urban target of many bomb devices throughout the 80s. except for the targeted Al-Zulfikar assassinations of perceived Zia supporters, an indirect faceless campaign was conducted against Karachi. Between Al-Zulfikar’s atrocities and the rise of MQM militancy there was hiatus for several years. Criminal elements of all the political parties as well as various criminal gangs in the city who had found its birth in the drugs and Kalashnikov culture exploited this vacuum. The grey period between 1988 and 1992 was full of dacoities and kidnappings for ransom. The city was in a virtual state of anarchy, dominated by criminal elements who had influential supporters in the government to provide them protection from the State’s Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). The LEAs themselves were infiltrated by criminal elements, the common citizen had no recourse for succour from anybody, the courts were helpless and prison was just a luxury pit stop as R & R (Rest and Recreation) for the hardened criminal. What was happening in the first PPP regime may have been shocking, what followed later was even worse, reaching its zenith during the Chief Ministership of the weak but garrulous Muzaffar Hussain Shah when his Advisor on Home Affairs ran him as well as a parallel criminal state within a criminal state. Whatever late Jam Sadiq’s shortcoming he kept his LEAs in line. To give just some example the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) heading the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) in Sindh, whose primary job it was to counter criminals and terrorists, is still help in prison on charges of graft. extortion, corruption, etc. Some bomb blasts during that era were certainly state-sponsored, this reign of terror included black-mail, intimidation, etc. In short, the State became part of the terror it was supposed to counter, it is in much danger of doing so again.

To quote my article ‘A CITY WITHOUT LEADERSHIP’ in THE NATION dated March 09, 1995

‘ Karachi has a myriad number of socio-economic problems that need to be addressed, to those will be added one of environment pollution in the unlikely possibility that the new power stations being planned should ever come onstream. Will all the power generated be able to resuscitate the carcass of a dead entity? The answer to redemption is so simple, immediate and unfettered Local Bodies elections followed by similar exercise of adult franchise up the tiers of power. Karachi is a rich city, it does not need any aid, only the ability to exploit its potential and resources in a peaceful environment. No other solution is more pressing than a return of power to the people of this city’.

The last spasm of terrorism in the city was potentially the most dangerous, militants reacting politically against the force of the State i.e. Operation Clean Up, running wild out of control of their leaders, the only law they gave was same to being the barrel of a gun. Unlike apologists who would have it otherwise, Operation Clean Up was a necessary operation and as it was carried out initially it seemed to serve its purpose i.e. to establish the rule of law in this major urban port city of Karachi. However some of the military hierarchy in control, particularly of ISI’s Internal Security deliberately set out to focus only on the MQM while turning a blind eye to the militants of all the other political parties and other criminal elements including the drug mafia. As such Operation Clean Up was messed up by various vested interests, not averse to using criminals for their own personal selfish purposes. While the uniformed troops under Commander Corps Reserve made considerable progress in ‘winning a war without bloodying swords’, their success was severely undermined by the men in mufti led by the then Head of Internal Security in the ISI, a Major General criminally who was a Brigadier was responsible for the Ojhri Camp blast that caused 1000 deaths. In any other country he would have been held accountable, here he was decorated and promoted. His hand-picked ISI Det Comd in Karachi raised, funded, equipped, trained and directed the Haqiqis, a faction of MQM dissidents from its previous core militant group. How a government can continence protecting a terrorist group escapes logic and belief. How governance during counter-terrorist operation can be sabotaged by immature forces and of the State with vested interest can be graphically explained by Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde existence of the State’s intelligence functionaries who even as they carried ‘Mehrabs’ on their forehead indulged in orgies of wine and women in so-called safe houses in DHA’s Seaview apartments and other elite residential areas of Karachi. The wholesale removal of these people from positions of authority soon after Gen Waheed took over as COAS terminated the wild west Dodge City occupied land atmosphere that was giving the Army a bad name. In contrast the counter-terrorism team today, the Rangers are still officered by the Army but with the Interior Minister as its strict pointman, the Army is not getting a bad name any longer. The brilliantly focused anti-terrorism campaign has broken the back of urban terrorism in Karachi, this singular success in so short a time having no parallel in the history of urban guerrilla warfare. However as we have seen in the brutal murder of 14 innocent activists on their way to a political rally as recently as August 14, less than a week ago, the forces of terrorism may have been crushed with respect to affiliation with one political party, by the ill-advised policy of not targeting all terrorist elements in Karachi, terrorism remains very much alive and well in Karachi.

To quote my article ‘THE BATTLE FOR KARACHI’ in THE NATION dated July 27, 1995.

‘Do those whose responsibility it is to fight these urban guerrillas have access to their fresh hard information directly or does it come back filtered and useless with respect to the crucial matter of time? It is patently unfair to take a professional soldier and give him ambiguous instructions in aid to civil power while putting him under many bosses and giving him uneven support from those agencies whose information is vital to the fulfilment of his mission. Professional soldiers are trained to defend the nation, it is also unfair to provoke their ambitions and as such coerce them to try and conquer their own country on the strength of greed, ambition and 10 acres in Safura Goth. Furthermore, the attempt to create another Federal Security Force (FSF) type-entity on the sly was pathetic and deserves contempt as it negates the concept of democracy which we glibly spout forth on every occasion. The lesson one learns is that the cardinal principle of a single command and control channel must be clearly defined and unambiguous as must be the statement of the MISSION, with all information concerning law and order available to Mushtaq fresh and without doctoring, in turn Mushtaq should report through the administrator to the Chief Minister, or in case of Governor’s rule, to the Governor. Mushtaq has been operating for the last six months blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back with political cheerleaders with vested interests exhorting him from the safety of Islamabad to exterminate all those considered ‘enemies’ (or rats, depending upon one’s preference as to the use of correct terminology). Also the MQM (A) is not the only one playing the urban guerrilla game, what about MQM (H), Al-Zulfikar and Jeay Sindh? To compound all this, Indian RAW has been actively fomenting violence in Karachi to take the pressure off Kashmir. In all fairness, the PM must acknowledge that it was the State (in the form of ISI) that created a parallel ‘terrorist’ organization, the MQM (H), and it is the State (in the form of IB) that still sustains it. Anytime the organs of the State acquire such powers which allow them to break the laws of the land they are pledged to uphold, the reaction is bound to be commensurate, as an act of self-defence if nothing else.

When criminals function in the name of justice, justice becomes a crime. Two wrongs do not make a right, or for that matter, three, four or even ten. Every political party in Karachi including the JI, PPP, JUI, PPI, ANP, etc has militant wings whose high-handedness often borders upon terrorism. MQM (A) is simply the best organized having the maximum sympathy of Karachi’s masses, followed by MQM (H) having the support of the Establishment. PML (N) is probably the only one without a coherent militant faction and certainly that is not for want of trying. Even the President mentioned MQM (H) and Al-Zulfikar as having terrorist factions in a recent Press briefing for foreign journalists.’

Another round of urban terrorism with criminality rather than political ideology as its main plank is likely if a course correction to snare all terrorists irrespective of political, religious or ethnic colour is not carried out immediately. The Federal Government should have focused on creating conditions conductive to returning to normalcy by launching definitive socio-economic measures in tandem of democratic initiatives, not doing so they lost a golden chance to dangle the carrot. A vacuum has been created by the destruction of the entire MQM middle-leadership, it is vitally necessary to immediately hold Local Bodies elections to fill that gap. The masses give short shift to government-sponsored and imposed political leadership, the Haqiqis are a living witness to this. As such in not filling the vacuum of leadership at the grassroots level by genuinely free Local Bodies election, the government has destroyed the much success it has had in the urban battlefield. While it is widely believed that the MQM militancy has been crushed, all pointers re that entire cadres have gone to ground in self-contained cells and may be training and consolidating for one single deadly purpose, to rise and strike as a coordinated force with greater venom at the life-giving infrastructure of this city.

To quote my article ‘COMBATING URBAN TERRORISM’ in THE NATION dated October 05, 1995

‘The next stage of political militancy is urban terrorism graduating into full scale urban guerrilla warfare leading to anarchy. This level of escalation involves streetpower using weapons to enforce political will. While almost all the political parties had armed militant in Karachi, immersed in activities that not only bordered on the criminal but went way beyond that fail-sate line, MQM’s militants were affected more than others because Operation Clean Up targeted them solely in urban areas while going after dacoits of all ilk in rural areas. At the same time, by arming, training and unleashing the dissident MQM (H) faction, the government of the day, Mian Nawaz Sharif’s themselves became culpable of fomenting urban terrorism. While MQM’s initial reaction was discreetly to go to ground, a full-scale war developed in the nether world that laid the foundations of the urban guerrilla warfare that is destroying Karachi. The Mohajirs must be brought back into the political mainstream. What is needed is a comprehensive social, political and economic package. Ultimately, there has to be a balanced arrangement in the urban areas of Sindh represented mainly by the MQM and the rural area which the domain of the PPP. Some give and take has been visible over’.

Terrorism has to be tackled differently from the normal means employed to maintain law and order. There is a vast difference between terrorists and criminals. A criminal’s mission in life is profit, as such destruction is a secondary objective, if at all. For a terrorist, destruction of life and property is a primary mission. Criminals may wary and proliferate through a broad spectrum of activity in pursuit of profit, as opposed terrorists are usually small in number and very dedicated as to their mission. Criminals may fear loss of their lives in accomplishing their mission, terrorists put forward their life as a weapon in the success of their objectives. One can go on and on but the important thing is that while criminal activity can alternately lead to anarchy the only objective of the terrorists is to bring about anarchy i.e. the collapse of the State. If one adds the factor of State terrorism, the resultant mix is a time-bomb waiting to tear the foundations of the State.

To quote my article ‘STREETS OF FIRE’ in THE NATION dated March 16, 1995

‘Instead of addressing the core issues that have brought Karachi to the verge of absolute anarchy, Ms Benazir seems to skirt the major problems. The general public perception is that there are no solutions on others because the logical ones tend to threaten PPP’s electoral power base in Sindh. When faced with such Hobson’s choice, the Government of Pakistan (GoP) invariably tends to take the easy route of rhetoric, contributing to the PM’s rapidly declining credibility. Hard to believe that this is the same South Asian vintage Joan of Arc of the 80s decade, holding forth the torch of democracy for the people of Pakistan. Regretfully, the PM is giving the word ‘obfuscation’ due legitimacy much beyond what is generally attributed to bureaucracy’.

The sound governance of counter-terrorism is therefore of vital importance to safeguard the security of the country. The forces of law and order must be kept in check list they flout the very laws they seek to enforce. Have countered terrorism successfully in the field, why has Gen Babar’s team of Ranger and Police lost the battle for the hearts and minds of Karachi’s main ethnic populace? The major issue subverting Gen Babar’s success is the high-handedness of the LEAs, particularly the Police. Five years ago they had gone to the bunkers in fear, holed up desperately in their Police Stations while Robinhood type militant gangs with wide public support provided rough justice. These personnel have now emerged from their holes with a burning penchant to make up for lost time. Their special target is the youth of Karachi and their demand is simple, when the youth is stopped in the street, unless you cough up money you are branded as an MQM terrorist, many parents have had to hand over their life-savings to free their children from these vultures. What do you expect these impressionable children to do? In essence you are creating a conducive recreating ground for terrorists. By failing to control the LEAs post-operation, the whole exercise has become counter-productive and a fertile ground for terrorism created.

If immediate steps are not taken which are politically mature and economically of substance socially. The city of Karachi will return to another spasm of urban terrorism worse than what we have witnessed till 1985 but the mental alienation of the Mohajir community will never be reversed.

The ethnic and religious schisms have still not been successfully exploited by those interested in Pakistan’s destruction but they can be unless we bind ourselves together and create conditions where terrorism can never be nurtured let alone have places of sanctuary to operate from only sound, mature governance that must equally exploit both the carrot and the stick to create a conducive environment that will allow the citizens of this city to breathe the Pakistani air with freedom.

To quote my article ‘A CITY WITHOUT LEADERSHIP’ in THE NATION dated March 09, 1995

‘ To delay due process of adult franchise any further will lead to disaster of the greatest magnitude. The PM must not be waylaid by the fears that her Advisors and the intelligence agencies daily feed her (as they did her predecessors before her) that allowing the MQM to regain power in Karachi would be a calamity. Her response should be the same democratic moves she repeatedly urges on the Opposition, the verdict of the electorate must be paramount and must be respected. Given massive support in Karachi, the MQM will come into power in most city areas as surely as night follows day, let the MQM bear the responsibility of restoring peace in their respective areas in the city. It is unthinkable that leaders who have a genuine commitment to the people who have exercised confidence in them in the past and one dare says will do so in the future, will stand by and allow their respective electorates to be massacred or their localities to be destroyed. That accountability is the essence of democracy. Unless elected leaders exist in Mohallah Committees to coordinate and exchange information from Committees to coordinate and exchange information from the street level upwards that would pinpoint terrorists and saboteurs in our midst, credible facts to counter such people will remain lacking. Artificial leadership thrust by government fiat can never be a credible alternative as the people will never trust them’.

To end. I invite your attention to Maurice Freehill’s quotation ‘who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light’?