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A tad too late, given that hundred have been killed in incidents of targeted killings, the authorities realised that Karachi has a problem and decided to call more men in the uniform, this time the Frontier Constabulary (FC).
While the Rangers and police were already here, the arrival of FC restored some peace in the city, albeit an uneasy one.
The decision to call in the FC to handle the Karachi situation was made at a ‘high level meeting’ by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Interior Minister Rehman Malik. At least this time Mr Malik did not go all technical and talked about ‘satellite imagining’ to counter terrorism in Karachi, but more on him later. According to this decision, the FC has been given ‘police powers’, that they are in reserve and will only be called out when 'required’. Meanwhile the Rangers and police were ‘directed to proceed’ in the affected areas, and not spare anyone regardless of their ‘influence’ and/or ‘political affiliation’. First let me be naïve and explain who and what this new force is, for I realised many people were a little confused regarding the FC or Frontier Constabulary. The FC is the Federal Paramilitary Force of Pakistan whose troops are largely from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and it is responsible for maintaining law and order in KP and Islamabad. And now Karachi. If the FC guns can restore peace in Karachi, where apparently the Rangers and the police have failed, well and good but what good will it be giving them ‘police powers’? If these powers had been useful in the first place, shouldn’t they have been given to the force that should have them anyway – the police? If the police can’t make use of these police powers, then how do we expect someone else to use them? Does this mean that our police are ill-equipped to do their job, and that the authority has been forced to call in men from across the country to do it. But then it is a fact that the police are hapless and unable to do its job. No wonder that the Rangers were called in to handle the situation some twenty years ago, and they never left. However, is calling in the FC from the mountainous Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province a good idea to handle the concrete jungle called Karachi – read alien territory for FC – a good idea? Will these men be able to sustain the onslaughts that this new territory will unleash on to them? And judging from the situation in KP itself, it makes one wonder how will the FC be able to handle the situation here – it is not just alien territory but a different breed of terrorism altogether.
Will these men be able to distinguish the terrorists from the common people, they have failed to sift the terrorists from their own people in their own areas, imagine how difficult it will be to distinguish between people in Karachi which is a mixture of different ethnic backgrounds and races. But we can only hope and pray that the equation of ‘police + Rangers + FC’ equals to lasting ‘peace in the city’.
Annie Sibtain Rizvi is a freelance journalist and tends to ponder over the socio-political happenings with an empathetic outlook.
