Pakistan's anti-terror strategy must change

The attack on the Frontier Constabulary Barracks in the heart of residential Islamabad is the latest in a series targeting Pakistan's law enforcement agencies and their infrastructure, as the attackers take advantage of the ill-prepared security forces.

Unfortunately, in Islamadad, ostentation and show are employed when situations call for subtlety and secrecy. The city is now overrun by police barracks, often next to part time taxi stands and public canteens, advertised by large placards proclaiming 'VIP and Diplomatic Protection Department'.

This needs to be corrected soon, to secure the lives of the personnel manning these stations and of residents and traffic nearby. Rather than blindly following the Americans, Pakistan should take a lesson from Theodore Roosevelt's maxim: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick'.

Next comes equipment and training.

While it is easy to pontificate after the event, one does not have to be a strategic specialist to notice the crying need for sniper/sharpshooter/SWAT expertise in most if not all the terror attacks afflicting Pakistan since its re-involvement in the Afghan abyss.

Had just one sniper been stationed, as during the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit in January 2004; on the Marriott's rooftop; atop a vantage point in Liberty Market prior to the sorry saga surrounding the Sri Lanka Cricket Team; on the roof of Manawan Police Academy; and at the entrance to F.C. Barracks; the attackers - suicide or otherwise - could have been taken out and the ensuing carnage averted.

Coming to terms of engagement, tactical inadequacy was compounded by undisciplined use of firearms. Onlookers of the unfolding drama in Manawan, glued in horror to television screens countrywide, were appalled at the pointless firing from the rooftop of the academy after the end of the day-long ordeal following the police's bailing out by the Rangers and the Army.

Law-enforcement agencies should be the last to indulge in such illegal activity. In the latest Islamabad incident, residents of the locality were petrified by the rat-tat-tat of gunfire after the lone bomber had blown himself up - situation fraught with peril, and in the dark of the night.

The word on the street, always crucial to national credibility and confidence regardless of veracity, is that a bystander was killed in the firing.

Another incident needs to be highlighted - with a view to being never repeated. News channels around the world showed the police viciously kicking one of the captured 'culprits' of the Manawan outrage. Pakistan should follow not Guantanamo Bay's universally condemned modus operandi, but the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty'.

The security hierarchy needs to restrain itself.

The citizens of Islamabad are now saturated by living up close to the diplomatic/multi-lateral community. These missions are here at Pakistan's pleasure. It should, like most host governments, behave with authority.

There is a perfectly convenient diplomatic enclave in the capital city - it should be mandatory accommodation for all bilateral and multilateral representation, and without exception.

The arrangement through which 'Islooites' have become rich and richer from renting/selling houses to embassies and United Nations missions should be prohibited - again consistently - by the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

The huge United Nations complex has a car park the size of Monaco or Luxemburg, having destroyed a gorgeous green belt and the atmosphere and the environment with its hundreds of hardware-ridden vehicles, despite having a large unutilised plot in the diplomatic enclave. The CDA should disallow any commercial establishments/enterprises in residential areas throughout the city.

One vital factor that seems - to ordinary Pakistanis at least - to be missing from the supposedly strong national efforts to counter terrorism is any effective attempt to deal with the manufacture, sale, storage and dispatch of explosives.

Surely explosives need to be monitored almost - if not as - vigilantly and expertly as our nuclear/missile facilities. No doubt the spectrum is vast - comprising import and export; air, land and sea; military, para-military and commercial production - but a similarly tight command and control monitoring system must be instituted and again mercilessly maintained, in the interest of the population's security and that of the security personnel themselves.

One fears that shoddiness and lack of coordination are assisting terrorist elements by default.

Further warnings of lax border security, as if any were needed, have been provided by the appalling occurrence of the Afghan-refugees laden container in Quetta, and of the disregard for Pakistan's sovereignty by the latest American drone attacks and their civilian toll.

Pakistan must decelerate and disentangle from its perceived 'conduit/mercenary status' vis-a-vis foreign powers surely, if slowly. Then the security forces in Afghanistan may take more Pakistan's arguments that they seal the border from their side a little more seriously.

Rehana Hyder is a specialist on development and security matters in Pakistan.