Daily Times

Sir: Media reports that the terrorists who attacked the Naval Dockyard in Karachi had help from insiders should not surprise us. This is not the first time that insiders played a key role in an assault on sensitive military installations. Attacks on Army GHQ, Pakistan Naval Station (PNS) Mehran and Kamra Airbase all took place with the help of insiders. Even the Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan jailbreaks took place when insiders conspired with the attackers. Apparently extremist ideology is making inroads into the law enforcing agencies as is obvious from these spectacular attacks with insiders’ help. If you look into the motto of our armed forces, you will wonder how to deny this fact. The Pakistan army motto is “Faith, Piety, and Struggle (read jihad in Urdu) in the way of Allah”. Where is Pakistan in this motto? This is another gift from the dark period of military dictator Ziaul Haq, who changed the ideological direction of our army. Pakistan’s armed forces are part of the same society. The motto of our forces should be aligned with our national interests to defend the country’s borders and not to wage jihad. What Islamic State (IS) is doing in Iraq and Syria in the name of ‘caliphate’ should be sufficient to open our eyes. We need to seriously look into our own contradictions before countering the extremists or their ideology.

MASOOD KHAN
Jubail
Saudi Arabia