Pakistan in Media

Opinionated Media Coverage

Cities under threat

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Editorial, Dawn, Pakistan
Saturday, 30 May, 2009

ON consecutive days two of Pakistan’s largest cities, Lahore and Peshawar, have been attacked by terrorists, killing dozens and sowing the seeds of terror in an unprotected, vulnerable population. Connecting the dots between suicide attacks and bombings in cities and towns to the operation under way in Malakand division and the one perhaps imminent in South Waziristan is not very difficult: under pressure and under siege by the security forces, the militants are hoping to break the will of the state by attacking soft targets elsewhere. The police are a primary target, but the bombing of a historic bazaar in Peshawar suggests that the general population may soon become a regular target too. Hard choices confront the state today. The more it goes after the militants, the more they will lash out against the population in the hope that short-term political calculations will cause the state to back down. And securing the cities always has a trade-off: a total security clampdown, even if possible in theory, would leave life for ordinary citizens unbearable and make cities unliveable.

Equally, however, without striking at the roots of militancy in the country, the pipeline that churns out suicide bombers and terrorists can never be shut down. And that would leave all the security arrangements in the cities redundant; a steady stream of terrorists determined to attack cities would suck the state into an endless game of cat and mouse that it can never win. So the military option in the northwest and Fata is the correct one, but it comes with two caveats. One, the military option must be effective: destroying entire areas and the lives of local populations in the effort to eliminate militants is counterproductive. If the state acts clumsily, it may well succeed in killing today’s crop of militants, but it would do so at the cost of possibly creating a new generation of militants culled from among the disaffected and abused local populations. So, without doing everything it can to protect the local populations, the state may find itself facing an even greater problem of militancy.

Second, intelligence-gathering and policing in the cities must be stepped up. At the moment, riddled as they are with inefficiencies, the police forces in the cities are not up to the task of counter-terrorism activities. Arrests are made frequently and alleged terrorist cells have been broken up in cities on a regular basis. But there is a gnawing sense that the intelligence apparatus and police set-ups in the cities are severely overstretched. They may be doing their best, but their best is limited by the resources, manpower and training at their disposal. More of everything is needed, and the federal and provincial governments must work to ensure it reaches the right hands at the earliest.

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