Editorial: The News - 02 July 2013

State and security

Sunday was again a day of carnage in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Around 50 people are dead in both incidents – bomb blasts. Quetta’s Hazara Town once again saw a large number of its own, 30 at last count, die along with scores injured – nearly all of them from the Hazara Shia community. A Frontier Corps’ convoy was attacked in Peshawar, where 18 were reported dead and more than 45 injured. Police and other security personnel and women and children died in both the attacks. Yet again the terrorists have struck at a minority community. And yet again the usual words come from those in high positions – leading to nothing of substance. There also seems to be a distinct lack of unequivocal condemnation from the political parties so recently elected on the back of promises to make a positive improvement in the lives of all, no matter their sectarian adherence. It is not just a particular sect that is under attack, it is the very fabric of the state itself – with politicians, men and women working on anti-polio campaigns, schools for boys and girls, the police and the paramilitaries, women university students, the judiciary, musicians and entertainers both male and female, foreign mountaineers murdered.

There is no doubt that there is a national crisis of security, with some parts of the country experiencing an almost daily degradation in terms of the quality of security for the ordinary person. Attacks have increased rather than decreased since the elections and the state seems powerless to arrest, or in any way curtail the activities of, those responsible. If ever the state needed a national policy regarding security that was jointly owned and implemented at the federal and provincial levels, the time is now. It cannot be a security policy that differs from province to province other than in minor details to accommodate local conditions, and there has to be ownership of that policy right from the president of Pakistan down to the individual police constable. This will require something that is almost wholly absent – coordination, the eradication of corruption in the forces of law and order and most vitally a ruthless weeding out of those within the forces of law and order who are sympathisers or fellow-travellers with the terrorists. The translation of electoral rhetoric to concrete action within a compressed time frame using only the substandard materials that are at hand is nigh impossible. Yet now is the time for inspired leadership, and for bold and difficult decisions that get implemented in spite of a foot-dragging bureaucracy. As things stand today there is a sense of drift, of uncertainty and an unwillingness to grapple with uncomfortable realities. That needs to change. Quickly.

London calling

Political dramas do not come much more dramatic than this. On Sunday, the nation woke up to the news that MQM chief Altaf Hussain, who is a British citizen and has lived in the UK since 1992, had decided to step aside from his position as party head. The reason for doing so was – as he made clear in lengthy telephonic addresses from London to his supporters as the day progressed – the alleged harassment he was experiencing at the hands of London’s Metropolitan Police who are investigating the murder of MQM leader Dr Imran Farooq. Altaf Hussain made a number of allegations, including that the police had taken items from his home but refused to provide him with an itemised list of exactly what was taken. He said that all this, and many more things, made it impossible for him to continue to lead the party. He also made astonishing claims about the British ‘establishment’ plotting to eliminate him. In Pakistan, the MQM was quickly on the streets demanding that Altaf Hussain retract his resignation which he duly did in the afternoon, leaving one to wonder what it was all about – this time.

What is puzzling here is the nature of Altaf’s reaction to a murder investigation in which the UK police have questioned thousands and neither arrested nor charged anybody. Yet the MQM chief was talking of court appearances and giving at least the impression that he expected the police to charge him in connection with the Imran Farooq murder or a money-laundering investigation against him. We should be able to expect a political party and its leader to let the law take its course and not indulge in vague conspiracy theories involving invisible and undefined ‘establishments’ of the world. On a broader level, what can be said is that somehow Altaf Hussain’s response to the real or perceived problems in the UK and his party’s reaction to political challenges it fears or faces in the changing political landscape of Pakistan found common expression in his addresses and the MQM protests in Karachi; and Altaf adopted his typically foreboding tone with forewarnings against ‘establishments’. Whatever the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide to do or not do with regards to Altaf Hussain, he and the MQM need to reread the new political terrain as it emerges. As the trouncing of the PPP in the recent elections amply demonstrates, nothing is forever in politics. The ebb and flow of political waters erode once-solid bastions and the landscape continues to evolve. The MQM is not immune or isolated from political change either. Demographics shift as well, and the engagement of an entire new generation of voters that is yet to have settled political intent or identity is also altering the political dynamic. Relying on an out-of-date political map might lead nowhere but up a blind creek sans paddle.