Many years back, this author was in the UK on a business trip. Among various meetings held and establishments visited was a large security printing organisation, to explore a possible joint venture in Pakistan that did not, as it happens, develop. At their sprawling establishment in Surrey, this company printed currency notes, stocks and bonds, postage stamps and cheque books for a number of countries. After a conducted tour around the works, we were treated to a cordon blue meal in the luxurious lunch-room with its gourmet menu. This, after all, was where finance ministers and State Bank governors from around the world were periodically wined and dined.
Obviously, the security arrangements for counting and weighing paper, inks and pigments between different stages of processing and storage were exacting. To my surprise, however, there was no body-search of the workers (or visitors, like us) when leaving the premises. I remarked on this and was told such searches would require expensive staff and could be regarded as violating privacy.
“We are not too bothered about someone hooking off with the occasional ten-pound note,” I was told. “We just write that off as wastage. What we are concerned about is any systematic, organised theft by a criminal gang. So, we prevent that.”
And how did they prevent that? “Oh, by good intelligence, of course. We have former Scotland Yard detectives working for us under cover. And it is their job to pick up the scent of any organised trail and cut it off.” And the system works? “It has not failed us in over 120 years.”
So, there you have it. Where it comes to controlling crime, prevention is the name of the game and good intelligence is infinitely superior to the most courageous battles for the preservation of the law. And this was a private sector company, without the resources of a government or a defence service to finance its intelligence needs.
Let’s be quite clear. It is not heroic feats of soldiery, but good intelligence work, which is the first and most essential line of defence in the struggle against extremist terror in which Pakistan is currently engaged alongside our allies. (Yes, the US, Britain, the other NATO countries and Afghanistan are indeed our allies in this endeavour). It is good intelligence work that would permit us to get off the defensive mode in this war and move forward into the attack. And it is precisely this which is missing.
As is endlessly trotted out, ours is the country that has suffered the most in this particular war, with 35,000 of our brothers, sisters and children slaughtered. In fact, the numbers are even higher, as I have pointed out before, if one counts the casualties from the time we first jumped into the Afghan theatre to save the illegal regime of the usurper Ziaul Haq. This is not to mention the consequential tragedies of massive human dislocation and the catastrophic cultural effects of a war that has now gone on for over 32 years.
Yes, Pakistan has suffered many times more casualties than the US, Britain, Spain, Indonesia and India put together. But, having said that, one must also ask: could better intelligence not have helped prevent some of the attacks? Could many of the lives lost not have been saved? Did so many Pakistani civilians and soldiers really have to die?
Consider. The US had its 9/11, Britain its 7/7, Spain its Madrid bombing, Indonesia its Bali bombing…each of them once. The trademark murderous violence innovated by al Qaeda surprised everybody. The first time, not again. That such foiled incidents as the ‘shoe bomber’, the ‘underwear bomber’, the Times Square ‘idiot-bomber’, etc, keep happening points to the fact that, around the world and particularly in the US, the terrorists continue to try. But, it seems, good intelligence, general alertness and some good luck have proved an outstandingly successful combination.
But not here in Pakistan. Here, bombings and attacks on places of worship and foreign establishments had become a feature as early as 1981. The Bohri Bazar bombing of 1987 reduced more than 200 Karachiites to lumps of charred meat. The FIA Centre in Karachi was part of a double bombing in 1991 (I was next door at St Joseph’s School with my wife, who teaches there). Today, on top of the 30,000 civilians and 5,000 soldiers already murdered by the Taliban, there are bomb attacks going off every day somewhere or other in the country.
And the attacks on GHQ in Rawalpindi, the Police Academy in Lahore, the CID Centre in Karachi and now the Mehran base — on top of the failure to detect either bin Laden’s lengthy residence in Abbottabad or the American helicopters sent to despatch him — are especially appalling examples of failed intelligence.
This, dear reader, is the state of preventive intelligence in the country. Let us mince no more words. No convoys of 7-series BMWs or Toyota Prados can bring back the 35,000-plus murdered Pakistani citizens or protect those that remain.
‘Very Perturbed’ from Lahore wrote to this publication:
“It is alarming that in all the hundreds of reports of terrorist attacks that have appeared on the electronic media to date, not once — I repeat ‘not once’ — have the anchorpersons spoken against the perpetrators who have committed the atrocities. They are very quick to talk of ‘security lapses’ and blame the government on all sorts of grounds, but never have I heard them condemn the enemies of our country, the religious monsters who commit these dreadful deeds” (‘Media duplicity?’ by Very Perturbed, May 25, 2011, Daily Times).
‘Very Perturbed’ is of course quite right. But mere condemnation is not enough. Each and every day and again and again, massive quantities of high explosives and sophisticated weaponry are being procured, processed, assembled, mobilised and utilised in one terrorist act after another. But no intelligence or investigation has been able to penetrate the elaborate financial, logistical and human trails involved. We have seen that a political figure of the eminence of Benazir Bhutto was not spared! Even the armed forces, in their extraordinarily expensive ivory towers, are themselves unsafe. Security lapses? You bet!
And then the government of the day — an elected government, with the votes of the people behind it — irresponsibly sponsors a senseless, toothless and completely off-the-mark Resolution in a joint sitting of parliament! For the thinking person, is the appropriate reaction one of fear? Despair? Or is it time to get really angry?
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet