Brig Ali & Co jailed for links to banned group

[Hyperion]

I hope the Jail time can be commuted and the officers are allowed to serve with some loss of seniority if they promise to not repeat any contacts with this organization. No need to ruin spotless careers of bright officers.

Mate are you kidding with us? This is military, not some mom pop convenience store.

They need to be executed by a firing squad. Yes, people have faced similar fate for things far less heinous!

 

[FNFAL]

Good job by the intelligence agency in apprehending these extremist nut-jobs.

@@ Pakistani members:I do understand that religion plays as a definitive,binding , motivating factor in ur armed forces.Hence it must really be a tough job taking the call on such people, for they can always argue in the name of religion, that is justifying their action.A very naive questions is that apart from fear of persecution(s) for not following the code, is the armed forces actively involved in moderation/toning down of overtly religious fundamentalism?

 

[Hyperion]

The details are so murky about this case that it just stinks. What if a soldier has undeniable proof of say a hypothetical scenario of Gen. Kayani acting in cahoots with the CIA on the Abottabad raid... The Army as an institution is a party to an alleged crime and it cannot be a competent authority to try Brig. Ali. There's conflict and bias. Hence a third party must try them.

Come on mate. Chain of command can not be broken, at any cost, else, we'll have an army working on premises akin to Pakistani politics.

 

[Armstrong]

Mate are you kidding with us? This is military, not some mom pop convenience store.

They need to be executed by a firing squad. Yes, people have faced similar fate for things far less heinous!

Finally we agree on something, Khan Sahib !

 

[third eye]

Infiltrating the ranks

Infiltrating the ranks | DAWN.COM


FIVE army officers, including a brigadier, have been court-martialled and handed down prison sentences for their links to an extremist organisation, Hizbut Tahrir. Whenever the subject of religious extremism within the army’s officer corps and its rank and file comes up, opinion tends to break down into two extremes. One side argues that it points to some sort of creeping coup, a pernicious radicalisation of the armed forces that threatens Pakistani state and society given the army’s influence over national security and foreign policy. The other side argues that whatever instances of radicalised officers have come to the fore, they are isolated incidents and dealt with professionally and quickly and as such pose no threat to discipline and unity of command in the armed forces. Arguably, neither side is right.

Policy choices aside, the armed forces are relatively well-disciplined and internal checks and controls are fairly strong. While it is an insular institution, there is reason to believe that neither is a serious rebellion inspired by Islamist causes likely, nor would it succeed were a small group of officers to attempt one. Hysterical opinion and analysis in the international media that appear occasionally and decry the imminent takeover of Pakistan by radical Islamists directly or by proxy via its armed forces is just that: hysterical and far removed from reality.

But that does not mean the armed forces do not have a very real problem within their ranks. While information is tightly controlled, there are enough dots to connect that paint a picture that is reasonably worrying: be it numerous refusals by soldiers to fight militants and terrorists in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or regular investigations and arrests of officers suspected of extremist affiliations or intermittent plots to launch attacks against the army leadership that were foiled before or during execution, the Pakistan armed forces do have an extremism problem.

Unpalatable as the suggestion may be for its leadership, it is more than likely that the army’s security paradigm has helped create a problem within its own ranks. When patronage of or sympathy towards militant Islamist groups is part of the army high command’s strategy for protecting this country from perceived external threats, it is almost inevitable that what is embraced as a hard-nosed policy by some will be embraced by others for the ideology that keeps the fires of hate burning. And then there are the effects on wider society — from where the next generations of army officers have been recruited — which is increasingly susceptible to right-wing and extremist rhetoric and propaganda. Acknowledging the problem is the first step towards addressing it. Denial could sink the armed forces, and the country too.