Daily Times

The recent elections, besides turning up a new rightist Pakistan reeking with regional tendencies, unfortunately also exposed a pathetic lack of security for its citizens. Terrorism that had already devoured over 50,000 people including 5,000 soldiers and sunk $ 75 billion from the decrepit national economy, drowning the dreams of a welfare state, once again raised its tentacles to thwart an equitable election process. The murderous attacks on the meetings, campaigns and convoys of the contestants, according to some emerging counts, swallowed about 200 more lives and left over 500 injured up to the election eve. The bombs, bullets and blood splattered across Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, including venues like Karachi, Quetta, Thatta, Jhal Magsi, Charsadda, Kohat, Swabi and Peshawar. Metropolises like Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta were repeatedly ravaged. In Multan, the heartland of Punjab, Haider Ali Gilani, the son of a former premier and himself a contestant, was kidnapped through a violent onslaught that also killed two of his personal guards. The macabre onslaught, unfortunately, followed an openly defiant and brazen threat to tear up the democratic process, dubbing it as ‘anti-Islamic pandering to the interests of the infidels’ and hence vowing to punish and incapacitate, initially, parties like the Pakistan People’s Party-Parliamentarians (PPPP), Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), presumed to be relatively liberal or moderate, eliciting a slight semblance of the changing world vision. Preceding this pronouncement they had also unequivocally announced they had “no dispute against Nawaz, Imran and their dogmatic religious brethren”.

Their tactics at this juncture were evidently aimed to dictate the success of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), known for their relatively retrogressive and conservative mindset, plus religious parties like Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami, entrenched into even more refractory fundamentalist fantasies. The cleansing of the candidates of a particular thought through murderous violence and imposing a desired choice on the voters became not merely a blatantly rebellious form of rigging, repudiating the election codes, but made a mockery of the state, its security organs and institutions. Even more eerily disturbing was the fact that the threats were issued well before the elections, repeatedly relayed through the media and pamphlets vended at various venues, yet no action to thwart, trace or apprehend their perpetrators was reported. Tracing and trouncing the perpetrators through such patent leads obviously was a rudimentary routine security step and also an essential prerequisite to swamp the perceptions of fear and apprehension and maintain the morale, mood and confidence of the common masses and voters. It was evidently more imperative when the masses were exercising their constitutional right and responsibility to elect their representatives. The grouch, disappointments, newer hopes, expectations and illusions roiled by election rhetoric and rivalries inherently also ruffle the general mood and temper, necessitating accordingly far more effective vigilance and security arrangements.

Yet the failure of the security forces even during this exigency, either through their apathy or inefficiency, evidently spiked not only new ordeals for any liberal and logical aspirations and the parties purportedly committed to their pre-eminence, but also popped some critical questions confounding the very purpose of a state and its innate obligation to ensure security and protection to its citizens. The moderate parties, particularly the PPP, which had already been relentlessly pummeled by a perturbing paroxysm of the media and superior judiciary, faced a further destructive dimension of the physical elimination of their candidates, campaigners and supporters. A struggle for bare survival has been superimposed upon their struggle for political success. Some critics would certainly contend that they suffered mostly because of their own blunders of being coerced into tolerating rather than crushing terrorism that has now returned to obliterate them. Their rejection similarly may be imputed to their inadequate performance in providing public welfare and utilities. Still, the failure to afford them equal rights of assembly, expression and access to the masses can in no case be defended. The setback, in some circles, as clamoured by several protagonists, similarly also stirred the chronic perception about the partiality of the establishment to have engineered the ascent of pro-Taliban titans. Such claims, unfortunately, further complicate the conundrum about the function and remit of the security forces.

The failure, flubs and perceptions about the security shield during the elections have further deepened the desperation and despondency wrought already by the mounting terrorism and sectarian carnage. The nation, thus, as a first inescapable immediate step, must revisit, redefine and recast the entire mould, motif and mechanism of its entire security system and structure to ensure security of the citizens. As an essential prerequisite, the paradox that the flurry and ferocity of the terrorist attacks and their potential to reach their targets in almost every corner of the country have weirdly increased despite the posture and pronouncements of the governments and the brass buttons to be fighting terrorism, has to be resolved and remedied. The nation has persistently poured a predominant part of its exchequer as well as foreign loans and loads of the special American funds into the fray. It has also persistently endured the rather obtuse and embarrassing dichotomy of its elected civilian icons being denied the reins or a requisite role in running the security policies, strategies or operations against the terrorist hordes and havens. The responsibility for the failure against terrorism thus falls squarely on the security shoguns and their sprawling establishment. Our armed forces are poised to counter the might of a six times larger neighbour and withstand almost the whole world on the western front. Yet our own citizens could not be defended against a few thousand terrorists. Our super smart intelligence agencies can miraculously smell some ridiculously silly memo being scripted in the remotest concealed American chambers, yet the murderous outfits across our own land somehow elude our snoops. A similar terrorist curse in Mali, it may be remembered, was crushed almost within three days. The entire paradigm, mission, motive, format, size and strength of the security forces thus ought to be accordingly rationalized, prioritising the protection of our citizens over the imaginary putative phantoms of regional pre-eminence and external threats. Formation of a special inland security system carved from the myriad inflated organs and supervised directly by the elected civilians would perhaps have to be instituted by the new parliament. But whatever its shape and mechanics, the masses just cannot be left marooned on a wide surging sea of insecurity where their parched lips have pined for a drop from the vast stretch and the billowing waves walloping all around them.

The writer is an academic and freelance columnist.habibpbu@yahoo.com