Question mark over Rangers-led Karachi operation

[Devil Soul]

Question mark over Rangers-led Karachi operation
IMRAN AYUB — PUBLISHED
KARACHI: As the horrific attack on members of the Shia Ismaili community in Safoora Goth on Wednesday added another black date to the ever-growing calendar of tragedies in the country, it also put a question mark over the Rangers-led targeted operations across the city.

Irrespective of who carried out the attack or who was behind it, the fact remains that gunmen boarded a bus and killed its passengers on sectarian grounds without being caught. They apparently were not deterred by the so-called Karachi operation launched in September 2013 to rid the city of its law and order menace once and for all.

If one examines the overall methodology of the Karachi operation, particularly in recent months, it appears that judicial procedure — howsoever questionable and patchy — is for those criminals associated with political parties, and ‘encounters’ — whose genuineness is always a moot point — is mostly the fate of suspected militants linked with banned organisations.

Such a policy makes it difficult to make a reasonable assessment of the reach of armed organisations in the country’s financial capital, since the background of militants linked to banned militant organisations and gunned down in ‘encounters’ and information about their prime targets never come to light.

Zohra Yusuf of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) agrees with this impression.

“There should be no double standards,” she says. “There have been some operations against extremist elements in Karachi by law enforcement agencies, but in no way can it be said that it’s being done to rid the city of them [militants]. I think the policy needs clarity.”

Formation of joint interrogation teams, frequent arrests of suspects on leads found after interrogation of their aides and targeted raids to arrest more criminals are measures that are quite often witnessed in the city. However, it seems that banned outfits and their alleged militants are handled only with ‘encounters’ by law enforcement agencies.

The police record also reflects the trend. The recently released figures of the Karachi police show that during four months — from January to April 2015 — 584 ‘encounters’ left 234 suspects “including terrorists, abductors and dacoits” shot dead. Despite such a high figure of ‘encounters’, city peace remains as elusive as ever.

“I think there should be a comprehensive strategy with clarity. The attitude is not clear. Such incidents point to failure of the entire National Action Plan,” says Ms Yusuf of the HRCP.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2015

 

[Sine Nomine]

First of All,author of artice must know about some thing called "sleeper cell" or "rat hole",TTP is in such bad shape that they will even admit if a wife of senior Official meets a miscarriage.It is us, who are just relying on TTP admittance phone calls we know our enemy but we are not reacting in all needed spheres.

 

[niaz]

First let me repeat nth time that such callous killing of totally innocent Pakistanis is out & out barbarism. How can any human being take revenge on Karachiite Ismailies for the Western bombing on the ISIS in Iraq? I keep repeating that TTP, Al-Qaida, Daaish followers and their supporters are not even worthy of belonging to the human race.

However, it is also an established fact that no matter how many soldiers / policemen you put on the street, acts of terrorism & sabotaged by determined activists cannot be stopped. French Resistant activities during WW2 proved it. Main reason being existence of support for these sub human barbarians in sections of the Pakistan society. This covert/subconscious support is not limited to the uneducated and the poor but thanks to the bigoted policies of the Zia; steeped into all strata of the population.

There are people everywhere who sympathise with the extremist & Takfiri ideology; one can infer the same in the some members of this forum thru their posts. This is not limited to Pakistan. Yesterday, a friend of my wife who is a doctor and also outwardly a devout Muslim was a guest in our house. There was constant coverage on the ARY News about the Karachi Bus murders; she remarked that US is behind all of this to destabilise Pakistan because of our nukes.

I was stunned. Despite the fact that a section of TTP allied with Daa’ish is claiming responsibility; a highly educated lady, who is a practicing GP in London, so flippantly excused the perpetrators putting the entire blame on the US. In my view such mind-set is prevalent in the Joe public all over Pakistan.

Perception about the US may be true, but to totally excuse actual perpetrators indicates that because extremists profess that this is in the name of Islam & Khilafat; many Pakistanis cannot find in their heart to find fault with their actions and may even secretly may support their actions. For example Jamaat Islami have condemned this act, but recently JI Amir considered TTP Commander Shaheed & Pak soldiers not so. Even Imran Khan, who reluctantly & belatedly supported Zarb-e- Azb; earlier invited TTP to open office in KPK and blocked NATO supplies to stop drone attacks on Taliban. There are no more drone attacks but attacks by TTP on civilians are still going on.

If we are serious about eliminating Takfiri & extremist threat from our midst, we have to first define who our real enemy is. As long as we keep on blaming foreign hand without recognizing that despite foreign hand; it is the Pakistani Takfiris & TTP activists who are carrying out the crime and these must be stopped, there would be no success.

Thank heavens that Pak Army has finally realized who our real enemy is. Regret to say that I see little change in the mind-set of PML-N, JI, JUI & PTI leadership. Bitter truth being that only ANP, PPP & MQM are truly anti TTP, Al-Qaida and sectarianism; rest of the party leaders only play lip service.

The above is my personal opinion and I am aware that supporters of PML, JI, and JUI & PTI will disagree with my conclusions. But there is a limit to accepting their excuses. Time has come to call spade a spade and without a paradigm shift in the mind-set, Pakistan will continue to experience such incidents. After usual condemnations, everyone will forget about it until it happens again.

 

[RazorMC]

...
Bitter truth being that only ANP, PPP & MQM are truly anti TTP, Al-Qaida and sectarianism; rest of the party leaders only play lip service.
...

Excellent post. But if I might say, the names you mentioned are also involved in various acts of violence, fraud, corruption, protection rackets and land-grabbing. It's not just them, like you said, sections of our society have sympathizers for terrorists and these criminal-politicians.
In this regard, I believe that Pakistanis are stuck between two evils. Whichever side we stand on, we are bound to lose.

 

[niaz]

Excellent post. But if I might say, the names you mentioned are also involved in various acts of violence, fraud, corruption, protection rackets and land-grabbing. It's not just them, like you said, sections of our society have sympathizers for terrorists and these criminal-politicians.
In this regard, I believe that Pakistanis are stuck between two evils. Whichever side we stand on, we are bound to lose.

I totally agree with you. However, operation against target killers & protection money grabbers (Bhatta Khor) is already going on in Karachi. I was mainly referring to the sectarian & Takfiri groups; I don't think that we are seriously tackling this menace.

 

[rockstar08]

There is Indeed a Big Question Mark on Rangers Credibility .. " ? "

 

[niaz]

Another poignant masterpiece by Ayaz Amir.


Ayaz Amir
Friday, May 15, 2015

Islamabad diary

The MQM is a problem and has been a problem. But let’s be clear about one thing: it is a secondary problem, as are the gangs of Lyari, as is extortion in Karachi. The Karachi police if properly led, which it is not, and properly motivated, which again it is not, should be sufficient unto these secondary problems.

For all practical purposes the Rangers direct Karachi policing. And the Rangers’ approach has yielded results, pushing the MQM into a defensive corner. Suspects have been picked up, their interrogation opening up fresh fields of inquiry. This is then the right approach and Rangers and corps headquarters should not be unduly worried by sniping criticism.

Pakistan’s primary problem, however, is different. It is the mindless extremism – a throwback to the dark ages – inspired by, and cloaked in, distorted religiosity. In whatever way this phenomenon began – and let’s not retrace our steps over the familiar historical ground – we are now stuck with it. This land and its people, with whose destiny vision-less leadership has played havoc over the years, will know no peace until, in God’s own time, our minds open up and the roots of ‘jihad’ are pulled up from the soil and this phenomenon is eliminated.

The quest for ‘jihad’, and for such misty concepts as strategic depth, pushed Pakistan over the borders of rationality. At long last this country, leaving those precipices behind, is straining every muscle and nerve to return to the shores of sanity. In large part it is trying to bid a farewell to ‘jihad’ – and succeeding on the western marches, along the Durand Line, but still remaining stuck in the old mumbo-jumbo when it comes to the eastern front, with India.

But who says that any return journey from hell is easy? The demons of ‘jihad’ are not dead. They lie scattered, hidden in burrows and holes, all over the national landscape. From north to south, east to west, their support bases exist. This is going to be a long fight, grim and bitter, and there will be casualties and suffering and sorrow along the way. Tragedies like the Peshawar school massacre and now the attack on the Ismaili bus in Karachi will happen – until we see the last of this scourge whose roots we watered with our own hands. This may sound callous but there is no other way of looking at it.

Look at the wages of disorder and civil strife in such fractured societies as those of Libya, Iraq and Syria…and now Yemen. Let the Pakistani weasel class get this into its head: curse the Pakistani military as much as you may like but be sensible of the fact that if Pakistan, despite the smouldering fires of Afghanistan and the staggering incompetence of its leaders, has not turned into another Iraq or Syria it is only because of the army. And we should thank our stars that the army has rehabilitated its image and it has a chief, an active chief always on the go, who is winning that elusive thing called public trust.

For too long there was a disconnect between the army and society at large – because of martial laws, etc. Mercifully, that phase is now over. It is not clever propaganda which has healed this breach but blood and sacrifice on the army’s part in the ongoing war against extremism. Terrorist incidents are still taking place but on the calculus of Iraq and Syria we should count ourselves lucky that despite everything the worst which could happen here is not happening.

So what then is our primary problem? It is represented by those forces which are upholding the banner of extremism: the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, its mutants and variations like the Punjabi Taliban, the various Lashkars and Jaishes whose specialisation is sectarianism, and now the emergence of elements professing allegiance to Daish or the Islamic State. Whoever was behind the attack on the Ismaili bus, the pamphlet left behind makes for interesting reading.

In English which is good, it delivers a warning to Rawafidh, Ahle-Tasheeh…rawafidh meaning ‘those who have taken a separate path’, a term first coined, I have been informed, by Ibn Taymiyya. It goes on to say that this attack is in retaliation for: “The barbaric atrocities against the Ahl Sunnat wal Jamaat by the Rawafidh, especially against the women, in the Levant, Iraq and Yemen. The martyrdom of innocent Muslims by the Rawafidh in Raja Bazar, Rawalpindi. The martyred students of Lal Masjid. Martyrdom of mujahideen in Keamari and other fake encounters by scum like Rao Anwar…”

What did the poor Ismailis have to do with the Levant, Raja Bazar, Lal Masjid and the police officer named in the pamphlet? Where stands the Levant and where Karimabad where this atrocity took place? By what code of honour do these purported soldiers of Islam conduct themselves? Yet there are frenzied souls here convinced that killing Hazaras and Gilgitis or Baltis, and now Ismailis because they are all Rawafidh, opens up for them the gates of paradise. What dragon’s teeth have we scattered on our soil? We set out to create a nation on the basis of religion. Over time, through a mixture of folly and short-sightedness, we have harvested a multiplicity of fanaticisms.

Let the Rangers keep a strict and unerring eye on the MQM because the MQM has a past and a history of violence. But let the army and the intelligence agencies keep their focus on the primary problem, the threat from extremism. The extremists when they have the upper hand show no mercy…mercy not existing in their creed. Even when it comes to killing women and children their fingers are steady, not hesitating or faltering. Pity has no place in their hearts, and all, mind you, for the greater glory of the faith. How did we end up producing people subscribing to such nonsense?

Not to forget the larger context, the Pakistani state had gone flabby and weak, for too long temporising with extremism, leaders (both military and civil) making excuses for the Taliban, government worthies virtually shedding tears when a terrorist kingpin like Hakeemullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack. Soldiers would be slaughtered, their throats cut, and our leaders would chant the mantra of peace talks. We have to be grateful to the Taliban and their allies that they spread such mayhem, so overplayed their hand, that a state which to all appearances had lost the will to resist has perforce recovered spirit and fortitude.

Raheel Sharif is the face of the new mood in the armed forces. Like it or not, a cult is building up around him…a cult a product not of the ISPR but of circumstances. (But let there be always someone whispering in his ear: Remember Caesar, thou art mortal.)

But even as the army, with vital help from the air force, and agencies and Rangers are engaged in this war with so many fronts and so many sides to it, the least the civilians can do is get their photo-ops right. There is nothing wrong with a working lunch but at the very moment when all TV channels are covering the bus massacre, for the assembled national leadership in Islamabad – another of those all-parties conferences – to be seen stuffing their mouths with chicken and dessert doesn’t quite convey the right impression. Did no one have the sense to tell the cameras to get out of the hall when the lunch trays were being brought in? If this is the genius we show when it comes to small things, how do we figure getting larger things right?

Tailpiece: In my piece on Hersh last Tuesday, I asked whether the doctor Maj Aamer Aziz mentioned in Hersh’s account was the well-known orthopaedic surgeon from Lahore. Prof Dr Amer Aziz has rightly taken umbrage at this suggestion and says he is “astounded” at the insinuation. My unreserved apologies to him. Very sorry.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com
Primary and secondary terrorism: the circles of hell - Ayaz Amir

 

[niaz]

Another excellent article this time in Urdu. Regret my inability to translate the same in Urdu.

Some people may remember that JI had taken a strong stance against the entry tests at the Engineering & Medical colleges designed by Agha Khan foundation. Who can forget Munawwar Hassan calling Hakimullah Mahsood Shaheed and even Imran Khan was until very recently declaring that this was not Pakistan's war. A section of the populace still believes that Malala Yusufzai is not even a Pakistani based upon a made up story of the DNA test from her ear wax by an unknown doctor.

Without openly naming anyone, the writer is implying that even political parties could have soft spot for the extremists.

Ghazi Salahuddin – khawab aur azaab – Safoora chowrangi se abb hum kahan jayien gae - Jang Columns

 

[syedali73]

Another excellent article this time in Urdu. Regret my inability to translate the same in Urdu.

Some people may remember that JI had taken a strong stance against the entry tests at the Engineering & Medical colleges designed by Agha Khan foundation. Who can forget Munawwar Hassan calling Hakimullah Mahsood Shaheed and even Imran Khan was until very recently declaring that this was not Pakistan's war. A section of the populace still believes that Malala Yusufzai is not even a Pakistani based upon a made up story of the DNA test from her ear wax by an unknown doctor.

Without openly naming anyone, the writer is implying that even political parties could have soft spot for the extremists.

Ghazi Salahuddin – khawab aur azaab – Safoora chowrangi se abb hum kahan jayien gae - Jang Columns

I wish things were as simple as Mr. Salah uddin has tried to present them. Because someone is not with Malala, he must be with Taliban; because someone did not agree with Sabeen's views, he must be a Taliban sympathizer; because Aga Khanis are active in GB, they must be angels. No Sir, it is not as simple as that. I have been teaching in AKU, have been to GB, have met with top officials there and I can tell you that the work the AK foundation is doing in GB is not for mere charity, but to convert locals, a move that has itched many in the area for good or bad reasons. Whereas I agree with the main theme of the article, I do not agree with the examples given, for better were possible.

 

[Shan-e-ibrahim]

I am telling this from the beginning that this MQM, Karachi, IS is all political drama to fool people and keep people busy thinking about security threat so that Nawaz Zardari Gang can loot money out of the recent $47 Billion deal with China and no one thinks about it.

 

[assas]

سانحہ صفورا چورنگی کراچی: پولیس صدر ممنون حسین کی وی آئی پی پروٹوکول کی ڈیوٹی کی وجہ سے جائے وقوعہ پر وقت پر نہ پہنچ سکی


Saniha Safora Ke Waqt Tamam Police Kis Ke Protocol Per Mamor Thi-Suniye Is Video Main
Discussion forum on Pakistani politics
siasat.pk

 

[Leader]

Whether you like it or not, Rangers have improved LAw and Order in Karachi, if required Army should step in to fix terrorists from MQM, ANP, Religio extremists, PPP and whatever shitty creeps or their supporters they have.

 

[assas]

There are 35'000 RAW Agents Operating in Pakistan - American Scientific Institute
Discussion forum on Pakistani politics
siasat.pk

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