Would the Pakistani military and the paramilitary forces be performing the policing and anti-corruption function had the police and affiliated institutions been autonomous? Would the police be more professional and effective had the political elite supported the Police Order 2002? Perhaps yes. Should the police have a federally unified service structure to be able to effectively fight the religion-motivated trans-nationalist monster of radicalisation? Can the police today really cope with the multiple crises that the Pakistani society is caught up in? And would the police in Pakistan be able to work as the primary bulwark against crime, corruption and terrorism without real political will? Probably not. This is the conclusion of two recent publications on the correlation of governance, counterterrorism and the police. The rise of terrorism and the increasing reliance on the police for governance issues, including massive protocol duties, have only added to the problems that the police faces. Two recent research studies, “Politics of Police Reforms in Pakistan” (Rozan) and “Counter-Terrorism and Pakistan Police: capacity and challenges” by the Centre for Research & Security Studies Pakistan, have attempted to highlight how the absence of political will and resistance to reform from within has stunted the growth of a professional, people-friendly deterrence force, and instead has rendered the police as a feared, rather than favoured, state institution. These studies draw on the rich experience of prominent working and former police officials and jurists, and underscore that following the tragic events of 9/11, Pakistan had the opportunity to strengthen, standardise and harmonise its policing laws that rested on the Police Act of 1861. General (retd) Pervez Musharraf did attempt to bring about some change through the Police Order of 2002. But subsequent changes to the Order in 2004 defaced it. Also, Balochistan and Sindh went back to the Act of 1861, while Punjab...

The debate over the June 9 raids by the Indian Army’s Special Forces against two northeastern insurgent groups on Myanmarese territory has produced two main reactions. The first, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s diehard supporters, is triumphalist; it trumpets the operation’s “great” success. The second reaction defends covert operations in principle, but believes that publicising them is unwise, even self-defeating. The first view’s proponents defend bellicose rhetoric and hashtags like #ManipurRevenge and #56inRocks used by junior information minister Rajyavardhan Rathore. They hold it was necessary to publicise the operation’s details – against military rules – because India must send out a signal not just to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang), but to all the “hostile elements in the neighbourhood” that its national security approach has undergone a sea-change under its “56-inch-chest” leader, who wants to end “a thousand years of servility masquerading as civility”. This argument is puerile. It comprehensively misunderstands both history– India as we know it was not one nation for a thousand years – and contemporary geopolitics. Military machismo and cross-border adventures aren’t the chosen means through which nation-states express strategic confidence. And it’s not by violating their neighbouring states’ sovereign borders that they build healthy relations with them, which are key to their own security. After the Khaplang faction killed 18 of India’s Dogra Regiment troops on June 4 in Manipur, India could have conducted a joint operation against the Naga guerrillas with the Myanmar army, with which it has had good relations even during the long years of Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s detention. India entered into ceasefire agreements with both the Isak-Swu-Thuingaleng-Muivah (IM) and Khaplang factions of the NSCN in 1997 and 2001. It had ample opportunity to renew the ceasefire with Myanmar-based Khaplang which ended in March. Alternatively, it...

On December 16, 2014, Sher Shah and Ahmed Shah left their home to attend classes at the Army Public School in the Peshawar Cantonment, just two kilometers from their home. Only Ahmed returned. Sher was killed along with 140 others. He was sixteen. That morning, the Taliban militants jumped over the boundary wall in the back of the school, and laid siege to several buildings in the school compound. It was revealed later that the barbaric incident included indiscriminate firing into crowds of young children, and immolating teachers in front of their students. All in all, 141 people were killed, 132 of them children, in one of the most atrocious, heinous attacks in Pakistan’s history. The event forever changed the security landscape in Pakistan, leading to the National Action Plan (NAP) to combat terrorism and extremism. Tufail Khattak, their father, was home that day. When news first broke out of a siege on television, he rushed to the school to try and find his boys. “It was madness,” he says. “The Army had cordoned off the area. Parents were clambering over one another to gain any information about their children.” In a state of confusion and panic, Khattak made calls to relatives and dispatched a few to the local hospitals, including Lady Reading Hospital and the Civil Military Hospital. “I saw parents receive news of their children’s death, people were crying, people were pleading for information, no one knew anything.” A few hours later, Khattak received a call from his younger son, who had been rescued from a different gate at the school. Ahmed had borrowed a stranger’s phone and dialed his father. Khattak asked him if his brother was with him. “He was mostly incoherent, but he had not seen his brother, that much was clear. I can’t explain how that felt, knowing one of your sons is alive and the other is missing.” By this point in the siege, most of the children had been rescued by authorities. Those missing were steadily being reported as dead. “It took us a...

Modi’s plans against Pakistan are not good for the region. Phone calls by Narendra Modi to Nawaz Sharif, Hasina Wajid and Ashraf Ghani on June 16 notwithstanding, there is little doubt that if an encircle-Pakistan plan ever existed, its execution is nearly complete – at least as of now – pushing the prospects for resumption of a normal India-Pakistan dialogue further away. The string of statements from Modi, his foreign and defense ministers, as well as Ajit Doval, the former spymaster and now the national security advisor, in the last three weeks, the vitriolic Pakistan-bashing in Kabul, and the continued demonization of Pakistan in Dhaka reflect a well-knit string of fire around Pakistan. This encirclement – if planned the way it appears today – does not bode well for the south Asian region, with a fragile Afghanistan still caught up in the vicious cycle of the religiously-driven insurgency. Unfortunately, Afghanistan has upstaged Kashmir and emerged as the critical link in what could be called the triangle of tribulation consisting of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – a region currently being stoked by the nationalist Modi, ably supported by an intelligence mindset. Coincidentally, Modi’s Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina Wajid minces no words and spares no opportunity in demonizing Pakistan. Her narrative revolves around Pakistan-bashing – wherever and whenever possible. And this fits into nationalist Indians’ recipe on how to deal with Pakistan. “We all have to remain vigilant so that those Pakistani collaborators (Khaleda Zia’s BNP) can’t get back to power, kill people and play with the fate of the masses,” the prime minister told a discussion organized to commemorate the “Martyred Intellectuals Day” on December 14. In February 2014, Doval had practically outlined what we see today – in the 10th Nani Palkhivala Memorial Lecture to Indian students at SASTRA University. Ajit Doval advocated the use of what he termed a “defensive offensive mode”, a “fourth...