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THE terrorist attack on trainee jail wardens from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Lahore has exposed once again the lapses in the capabilities of security forces to counter these threats.
Terrorist attacks had decreased by 56 per cent in Punjab in 2011 compared to 2010, which might have led to complacency in the security forces’ surveillance and intelligence-gathering, offering an opportunity to the terrorists to strike.
The terrorists have been using a range of tactics in target killings in Punjab. In May this year, they attacked a police picket in Lahore killing two policemen and injuring two others. The same picket had been targeted by a suicide bomber in 2009. In another attack that was believed having sectarian motives, renowned Shia religious scholar and educationist Dr Shabihul Hasan was gunned down in Lahore. In an attack similar to the Lahore assault, unidentified assailants attacked a military camp in Gujrat, also in Punjab, in the first week of July, killing at least eight security personnel.
This may lead one to assume that perhaps the same group is involved in these attacks, but at the same time the change in tactics and in the frequency of attacks reflects that the terrorists are under some pressure or that they lack human resources. There has been a clear decline in the number of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the first quarter of 2012, as 13 attacks have been reported so far, 65 per cent less than the attacks in the same period in 2011. The space for terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas is shrinking and the ongoing military campaign against them or drone strikes or indeed both could be the reason.
After the killing of Qari Hussain and Badar Mansoor, both masterminds and trainers of suicide bombers, it seems that the terrorists are missing their destructive skills or are preserving their human resources until they have regained their operational capabilities.
The security officials in Punjab immediately linked the attack on the trainee jail wardens in Lahore to the resumption of Nato supplies through Pakistan. However, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack and called it a response to the mistreatment of jailed Taliban.
The security officials’ claim can be seen as an attempt at saving face by diverting attention away from their negligence and failure. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the Taliban travelled all the way from Fata or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to launch the latest attack; local elements are bound to have played a considerable role. This attack indicates that the terrorist support networks are still active in urban Pakistan and sleeper cells exist. This also raises questions, not for the first time, about terrorist getting support or intelligence from within the security agencies.
After the recent wave of terrorist attacks, the Punjab government had admitted for the first time that the southern belt of the province was a breeding ground for militants. The Punjab chief minister stated at a ceremony that he had launched Daanish schools in the region to prevent the youth from falling into extremists’ hands. Although it is partially true that the problem is only in the south of the Punjab this realisation has not translated into an appropriate response to the challenge. And that is a flaw not only in the Punjab government but applies to all provinces and to the federal government as well.
This is a critical issue, which deals with threat perceptions of the security apparatus in Pakistan, and prevents the formulation of an effective response to security threats. A clear approach based on a distinction between the challenges of a tribal insurgency and the pervasive terrorism in the country is required. Al Qaeda, the TTP and other militant groups in Pakistan may have a nexus but their operational strategies and partners are different. Countermeasures at the security, political and ideological levels need to factor in those differences and respond accordingly. Understanding the nature of the challenge in each context is also important.
This is the main hurdle in the formulation of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. In the absence of such a strategy, law-enforcement agencies develop certain responses, which may be effective at times but cannot have a long-term impact, as they are not part of the broader strategy and each institution tries to respond in its own way. Working in this manner, there is little prospect of them adopting new approaches to tackle the menace.
Even though non-collaborative responses by security forces have had some success, which must be acknowledged as terrorists have been forced to change their tactics and adopt new strategies, the security forces can learn from the terrorists how to rapidly adjust to new challenges.
The security forces’ focus has so far been on countering insurgency in the tribal areas, mainly through the use of military force against the militants, encouraging local communities to confront them and engaging the militants in talks. So far, the first component of the strategy has proved effective but has not yielded the desired results. The law-enforcement agencies can only cope with the new challenges by putting in place improved investigation, intelligence-gathering and intelligence-sharing mechanisms, and by developing a rapid response system.
Accurate threat perception is crucial to effectively responding to the sort of terrorism Pakistan faces. A clear approach based on a distinction between the challenges of tribal insurgency and urban terrorism is required at the policy level. Most importantly, law-enforcement agencies need to continuously review not only their own capabilities but also those of the terrorists.
The writer is editor of the quarterly research journal Conflict and Peace Studies.
