Islamabad—Islamabad bombings may have exposed big chinks in the internal national security armour even before it has been launched.  

PPP’s Yousaf Talpur was spot on when he mentioned “a total collapse” in the local administration. None of the 33 agencies could trace a shred of evidence. The debate on the internal security left us even more high and dry. For a start, the Interior Minister who was supposed to listen to what the Parliamentarians had to say about it was missing. And so was most of the Cabinet.

Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani took the discussion to the giddy intellectual heights linking our internal security with the “clash of civilizations” and how we need to tackle the third and the fourth world war. Perhaps the JUI ideologue was trying to impress the overly fed and aged students of Dawa Academy sitting in the galleries. The Speaker had to request him to wind up on local brass tacks after almost 15 minutes of intellectual-speak on “Faashism, Markasism” and what not. The Maulana may have come a long way from his job in the Levies to become the custodian of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) but remains averse to accepting DNA as evidence in rape cases. People look up to him to Islamize the Constitution of Pakistan but some enemies of Islam have declared his degrees as fake. He is accused of furnishing three different madrassah degrees in three different elections. It was under his great patronage that JUI’s Balochistan MPAs remained part of every government in the last 26 years and were, Alhamdulillah, materially rewarded for their services to Islam. Had it not been to the nefarious designs of our Constitution-framers, who kept CII as an advisory body, he would have turned this country into a Taliban state long time ago.

PTI’s Shireen Mizari was not far behind in her academic-speak. Perhaps politics is not everybody’s cup of tea. Tariq Aziz of Neelam Ghar fame was a top compere but was a miserable failure in the National Assembly. We can’t blame the government if it did not decipher her thesis on “typologies of threat.” It was also beyond our average Joes who can’t understand classroom power point presentations. She adhered vociferously to PTI’s great vision of handling terrorist threat: disengage, isolate and exterminate. May be not so simple. The PTI has got the military operations disengaged against the Taliban but it is difficult to isolate them. So far, the PTI has not helped us separate the good Taliban from bad. And we are yet to see the PTI exterminate any terrorists in the KP. Perhaps Imran Khan needs to explain this gibberish.

The only exception was Danial Aziz. He is cut out to be a Law Minister but his baggage from the Musharraffian past seems to be an obstacle. But if Zahid Hamid is acceptable to the government, why not our Danny Boy. One cannot disagree with him that the first line of defense against terrorism is the police. The biggest issue is the mish-mash of conflicting laws in different provinces.

Danial can make you laugh your head off by poking holes in the kind of laws that we have drafted in provinces. Balochistan takes the lead as it has simply plagiarized the 1861 Police Act into its 2011 Act. It mentions the “conveyance of elephants” and visiting “sharaabkhanas” as duties of the Deputy Commissioner without realizing that the world may have changed in 150 years. His thesis is that our babus are dying to restore the British-style judicial magistracy, violating the separation of judiciary and the executive as enshrined in the constitution.

Danial contests the Balochistan law in the Supreme Court. His argument is that If we have judiciary separate from the executive at the highest level, how can we have it at the local level. Sindh is not far behind as it uses Police posts of CCPO and DCO whereas they do not exist in papers.

He was spot on to point out that we need to first clear the administrative mess among the cadres, provinces and various tiers of the State. We can’t restore the archaic commiossionerate system. Danial gave the examples of Malakand where the DC Bahadar has not delivered at all. Islamabad too has seen the flaws in the system time and again. As it happened in the case of Sikandar episode, the supposed boss of the administration, Deputy Commissioner, was missing from the scene. The gist was that terrorism and insurgencies can be best resolved at local level. We can’t revert back to the British Raj but improve the administrative functioning in accordance to our modern requirements. Perhaps Danial could also convince his own PML (N) government in Punjab, which finds the local bodies the biggest hindrance to its political control.

We look forward to better input on internal security in the days to come. Perhaps our Senators could chip in better if the government cares to incorporate them into the discussion. But it’s shameless to see the Senate adjourning its sessions on Mondays just to include weekend holidays. We understand that the Senators are much behind their schedule but this is not the way to waste tax-payers money.

Tail piece: Dastileaks continue to take its toll. While the country deals with an existential threat, he has got the Parliament busy in what may be the most frivolous allegation. But this just tell us something about the times that we live in. What Dasti ignores is that he could be disqualified if he fails to present evidence to support his charges. The High Court in Multan may also vacate the stay on which lingers his MNAship. Three cheers to that!

Published on: thespokesman.pk

Date: Wednesday, 05 March 2014