sajjad
22nd February 2005, 14:31
EDITORIAL: Pakistan’s unchecked urban violence
A study prepared in the United States says that violence in Pakistani cities has increased and state institutions have been unable to stop it. It comes to the conclusion that “inadequate training, lack of resources, corruption and absence of transparency are responsible for the inability of Pakistan’s security forces to effectively counter militant groups engaged in urban violence”. As a result there is “immense distrust between the police and the policed”. It goes on to say that the hardline measures taken to curb ethnic violence in Karachi in the early 1990s failed because they were of a “tactical” nature and the sectarian violence emanating from the militant groups has been allowed to go on without being properly examined.
Urban violence based on ethnicity and crime has reared its head in many Third World cities. In most cases the state has not been able to tackle it effectively. The bigger the city the more it is at risk from the formation of an underworld. The resources of the state are stretched and the executive is not strong enough to cope with the phenomenon. Politicians, whose responsibility it is to look after the interests of the people, are forced over time to rule in tandem with the underworld because they can’t defeat it. Looking at the two megapolises of Mumbai and Karachi, many features of violence are in common. What starts as crime becomes internalised in democratic politics. The question arises: is crime being “cured” through normalisation or is the democratic structure being criminalised? The truth is that both may be happening at the same time.
Pakistan is different from the other Third World states in some respects. Its administrative structure is out of joint because of what the state undertook in the name of jihad and national security in the last 25 years. There aren’t many other states in the world which have shared their writ with non-state actors and private militias that have come to define the state’s ideology and legitimacy. In Pakistan’s case, the jihadi outfits fighting the war in Afghanistan and Kashmir had two moral and strategic advantages. The Pakistani state patronised them and maintained their supremacy in Pakistan’s civil society in order to keep them interested and motivated in jihad. But problems began to arise when the jihadi militias armed with religious authority appeared to the people as an alternative to the Pakistani state itself. Power and moral authority were vested in them. Their leaders were able to sermonise against the state with impunity, mould the behaviour of the cities and even influence the formulation of country’s foreign policy in the regions in which they were operating.
In short, jihad robbed the Pakistani state of its internal sovereignty. Crime became obfuscated when it was done at the behest of organised groups that wielded political and moral authority. Ethnic violence in origin resembles religious violence because of this fundamental “self-validating” process. In Karachi, as in Jhang, ethnic and sectarian groups were first looked at with suspicion, then included in the democratic process. But when the law is relaxed to “assimilate” such groups, it is the democratic process that suffers. Members of these groups sat in the assemblies and were able to “legitimise” their localised city-centred governance along with such practices as “bhatta” (protection money). Thus, in contrast to the ethnic-religious components within the democratic system, mainstream politicians appeared as weak and spineless characters often protecting their authority, not through state institutions, but through alliances with the militants.
While it may be true that various state organs and agencies are inadequate in strength and in training, there is something even more serious to consider. Many such state agencies are, in fact, thoroughly indoctrinated in favour of those who are intent on using violence to achieve their goals whatever those may be. Some of the men who blew up the mosques in Karachi last year and attacked the Muharram procession in Quetta the year before were found to have links with the police. One terrorist was actually a constable who had been trained in Afghanistan! The men who planned and executed the unsuccessful attempt on the life of President Musharraf in 2003 turned out to be employees of the armed forces of Pakistan.
The truth is that, not only are the law enforcement agencies inadequate, they are infected with the very ideas that give rise to violence. As for the intelligence agencies, which are supposed to normally play an important role in any campaign against violence, the less said the better. They were responsible for inducting the militants as instruments of the state in the first place. They don’t profile the cities sociologically because they are not convinced of the rightness of such a task and therefore have little knowledge of where the trouble is going to erupt next.
The problem is therefore more intractable and dangerous than made out by the American report. All the more reason then not to consign its findings to the rubbish bin of conspiracy theories. The time to act is now. *
EDITORIAL #2: Hating the US doesn’t help
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which advises the US Congress, Pakistan is “probably the most anti-American country in the world right now, ranging from the radical Islamists on one side to the liberals and Westernised elites on the other side”. This may be correct. Pakistan is “probably” intensely anti-American like most Muslim countries and could be in tune with a somewhat less intensely anti-Americanism in the rest of the world.
Pakistan was not even seriously divided over the American attack on Afghanistan despite its “consensual” status at the United Nations. But it certainly became of one voice with the rest of the world on Iraq. As far as Pakistan’s anti-terrorism strategy is concerned, this trend is, of course, a negative factor. Apart from being a member of the world community that doesn’t like what America is doing, Pakistan is also a major recipient of the jihad blowback. But what hurts Pakistan most is lying to hide the truth. In 2004, on the day of Ashura, dozens of people were done to death in Iraq and Pakistan through sectarian terror. Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq decided that the Americans had killed the Shias. Most unhappily our clerics too, both Shia and Sunni, decided to do the same, obediently followed by a number of leading columnists in the Urdu press. This, despite the fact that hating the US hurts Pakistan’s strategic interests and well-being. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-2-2005_pg3_1
A study prepared in the United States says that violence in Pakistani cities has increased and state institutions have been unable to stop it. It comes to the conclusion that “inadequate training, lack of resources, corruption and absence of transparency are responsible for the inability of Pakistan’s security forces to effectively counter militant groups engaged in urban violence”. As a result there is “immense distrust between the police and the policed”. It goes on to say that the hardline measures taken to curb ethnic violence in Karachi in the early 1990s failed because they were of a “tactical” nature and the sectarian violence emanating from the militant groups has been allowed to go on without being properly examined.
Urban violence based on ethnicity and crime has reared its head in many Third World cities. In most cases the state has not been able to tackle it effectively. The bigger the city the more it is at risk from the formation of an underworld. The resources of the state are stretched and the executive is not strong enough to cope with the phenomenon. Politicians, whose responsibility it is to look after the interests of the people, are forced over time to rule in tandem with the underworld because they can’t defeat it. Looking at the two megapolises of Mumbai and Karachi, many features of violence are in common. What starts as crime becomes internalised in democratic politics. The question arises: is crime being “cured” through normalisation or is the democratic structure being criminalised? The truth is that both may be happening at the same time.
Pakistan is different from the other Third World states in some respects. Its administrative structure is out of joint because of what the state undertook in the name of jihad and national security in the last 25 years. There aren’t many other states in the world which have shared their writ with non-state actors and private militias that have come to define the state’s ideology and legitimacy. In Pakistan’s case, the jihadi outfits fighting the war in Afghanistan and Kashmir had two moral and strategic advantages. The Pakistani state patronised them and maintained their supremacy in Pakistan’s civil society in order to keep them interested and motivated in jihad. But problems began to arise when the jihadi militias armed with religious authority appeared to the people as an alternative to the Pakistani state itself. Power and moral authority were vested in them. Their leaders were able to sermonise against the state with impunity, mould the behaviour of the cities and even influence the formulation of country’s foreign policy in the regions in which they were operating.
In short, jihad robbed the Pakistani state of its internal sovereignty. Crime became obfuscated when it was done at the behest of organised groups that wielded political and moral authority. Ethnic violence in origin resembles religious violence because of this fundamental “self-validating” process. In Karachi, as in Jhang, ethnic and sectarian groups were first looked at with suspicion, then included in the democratic process. But when the law is relaxed to “assimilate” such groups, it is the democratic process that suffers. Members of these groups sat in the assemblies and were able to “legitimise” their localised city-centred governance along with such practices as “bhatta” (protection money). Thus, in contrast to the ethnic-religious components within the democratic system, mainstream politicians appeared as weak and spineless characters often protecting their authority, not through state institutions, but through alliances with the militants.
While it may be true that various state organs and agencies are inadequate in strength and in training, there is something even more serious to consider. Many such state agencies are, in fact, thoroughly indoctrinated in favour of those who are intent on using violence to achieve their goals whatever those may be. Some of the men who blew up the mosques in Karachi last year and attacked the Muharram procession in Quetta the year before were found to have links with the police. One terrorist was actually a constable who had been trained in Afghanistan! The men who planned and executed the unsuccessful attempt on the life of President Musharraf in 2003 turned out to be employees of the armed forces of Pakistan.
The truth is that, not only are the law enforcement agencies inadequate, they are infected with the very ideas that give rise to violence. As for the intelligence agencies, which are supposed to normally play an important role in any campaign against violence, the less said the better. They were responsible for inducting the militants as instruments of the state in the first place. They don’t profile the cities sociologically because they are not convinced of the rightness of such a task and therefore have little knowledge of where the trouble is going to erupt next.
The problem is therefore more intractable and dangerous than made out by the American report. All the more reason then not to consign its findings to the rubbish bin of conspiracy theories. The time to act is now. *
EDITORIAL #2: Hating the US doesn’t help
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which advises the US Congress, Pakistan is “probably the most anti-American country in the world right now, ranging from the radical Islamists on one side to the liberals and Westernised elites on the other side”. This may be correct. Pakistan is “probably” intensely anti-American like most Muslim countries and could be in tune with a somewhat less intensely anti-Americanism in the rest of the world.
Pakistan was not even seriously divided over the American attack on Afghanistan despite its “consensual” status at the United Nations. But it certainly became of one voice with the rest of the world on Iraq. As far as Pakistan’s anti-terrorism strategy is concerned, this trend is, of course, a negative factor. Apart from being a member of the world community that doesn’t like what America is doing, Pakistan is also a major recipient of the jihad blowback. But what hurts Pakistan most is lying to hide the truth. In 2004, on the day of Ashura, dozens of people were done to death in Iraq and Pakistan through sectarian terror. Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq decided that the Americans had killed the Shias. Most unhappily our clerics too, both Shia and Sunni, decided to do the same, obediently followed by a number of leading columnists in the Urdu press. This, despite the fact that hating the US hurts Pakistan’s strategic interests and well-being. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-2-2005_pg3_1