I Couldn’t Vote for PTI, But I Guess it Was Alright

By Xeric

Read at defence.pk

This piece is in response to the knee-jerk reaction by Imran Khan wherein he “raised serious questions over last week’s jailbreak in Dera Ismail Khan and called for introspection by all institutions of the state," in particular the Army.

A natural response to these questions would be: whose government is there in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP)? Who is the senior-most executive in the province? Whose prime responsibility is the maintenance of law and order?

The answer is simple – Chief Minister (CM) KPK, read the government of PTI!

There was a time when good leaders were said to possess the moral courage to own their failures, but perhaps, those were good times. The fashion these days is the opposite – transfer the blame to others, and this is precisely what Imran Khan has done.

The “introspection by all institutions of the state” part of the statement is somewhat well taken; we all ought to question how a jailbreak could take place when there was a precedence of the same (the kind of introspection I am talking about is dealt with later). However, including a mysterious “army division” into the circle of ‘accused’ is not understood.

Breaking the Army Division myth 

1. There is no ‘army division’ in DI Khan, only the skeleton Headquarters (HQ) of an Infantry Division resides there with (all of) its combat elements i.e. brigades actively engaged in fighting around Tank, Jandola etc.
2. The positioning of this division “HQ” at DI Khan is not permanent (not its actual location); it is only there as forces under its command are engaged in operations ahead.
3. Each field formation of Pakistan Army is responsible for certain administrative divisions/districts/tehsils; called Internal Security Area of Responsibility (IS AOR) of the concerned division. Here under-command units of the Division would act/react when called in Aid of Civil Power i.e. in case of natural calamities like floods, earthquakes or other tasks like elections duties or for security reasons. DI Khan does not fall in IS AOR of the division located there i.e. it is not primarily responsible for policing/security of Dl Khan.
4. Although, this division did undertake the election duties during General Elections-2013 in addition to its primary IS duties at its peace location (location not disclosed). But then the government had requisitioned the Army to assist for GE-2013 (as a one-time measure).
5. Lastly, Central Jail DI Khan is the baby of Prison Department, KPK and not that of the Army:

Where is the anti-terrorism policy?

 

The above-mentioned facts now beg a few questions:

1. Where is the anti-terrorism policy we all have been talking about? Being part of a uniformed organization, I can assure you that General Officer Commanding (GOC) of this so called division at DI Khan, Inspector General Police (IGP) KPK, IG Prisons KPK or IG FC KPK cannot formulate this policy at their own. However, someone senior to them and to whom these people are answerable, has to formulate this policy by ‘making’ these commanders sit together. That guy is none other than CM KPK a.k.a government of KPK. So dare I ask; what has he done so far in this regards?
2. A rep of PTI was seen telling us on live TV that the Police is not supposed to fight back in case of a terrorist attack. Right, so why not we just hand over every prison, bank, government offices etc to the Army?
3. How much budget did government of KPK allocate to equip its LEAs? Alternatively, did it ask for more if it was short on it?
4. Is even terrorism on Imran Khan’s top agendas?
5. What directions/policy, if any, did Imran Khan and his party gave to its LEAs to fight terrorism after it formed government in KPK?

The bottom line remains: when will the civilian government take responsibility?

Gen Kiyani had already said that terrorism is our real enemy and our internal threats need our foremost attention; it is our war! (This is how we wanted the role of Army to be in our national policymaking – discreet and passive, right? Or maybe we want to go back to square one where the Army ‘ran’ the country from behind the scenes?). Nevertheless, the real question is what our elected leaders have done so far in this regard:

a.    We are still unclear about whose war it is.

b.   We are unable to gather an APC since the past 3 months to discuss/formulate our terrorism policy.

c.    Some of us still want to talk with the enemy (I do not mind talking, but this has to be collective decision).

d.    We believe in good and bad Talibans.

Believe me, this is not how nations fight terrorism!

And a word of caution for those who would now ask the Army to do it (policy making) for them; sorry sir, no can do. Army, for the first time in our history, is behaving exactly it is supposed to – not fiddling with the state’s affairs. After all, Pakistan had marked its first peaceful democratic transition.

So this time around, our elected leaders have to take charge and lead on, without tossing the responsibility of fighting terrorism to the LEAs or the Army alone. If not, Bannu’s and DI Khan’s would continue to happen and we would just point fingers towards each other, order inquires and call it a day.

I consider Imran Khan to be a man of actions and not mere words, and I like him for it. So I suggest, that he should man up, shoulder a little responsibility when his IG Prisons failed him and stop doing what his predecessors did – pointing fingers on other. Instead, he should lead on and take us all along in this/his fight against terrorism.

We/he should for once and all figure out whose war it is (Army already did), decide upon an anti-terrorism policy ASP, and once done, we should execute it as a nation (Police, Army, Politicians – all and sundry inclusive).

Lastly, for the record, I wanted to vote for PTI in these elections, but could not as I failed to receive my Postal Ballot on time, and I felt dejected.

But now I think, maybe it was not that bad after all.

Disclaimer: This piece would gladly face the online tsunami of PTI e-warriors.