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| India-Pakistan |
| Police mulling anti-Taliban militias in Mianwali |
| 2009-07-07 |
| Police in Mianwali are feeling the heat of several Taliban-related shootings, bomb attacks amid the arrest of several terror suspects in recent months, and is considering ways to curtail the threat, including a plan to develop local militias to fight terror. Rugged mountains separate Mianwali from the NWFP, where the army is engaged in an offensive against the Taliban and the local police force is struggling to face the fallout of the battle across the mountains. The ill-equipped and understaffed force was trained to fight crime, not to counter insurgencies. District Police Officer Akbar Khan is trying to rise to the challenge by constituting a special police force, which he said would be made up of locals, but with the same powers as the police. Their main role would be to assist the police in anti-terror efforts. The recruits will be issued guns licensed by the government and will be authorised to use them while pursuing terror suspects. "Their prime task is anti-terrorist action," Khan told BBC. Trust-building: "Giving them guns is a message of trust, that we know that you are with us, that you are patriots and you are able to defend yourself until the time we come to you." Khan said the recruits would have the same protection as a police official in case they killed a suspect while tending to their duties. "If that [person] is an outlaw and they're doing it in the line of duty, they will have the same protection as a police officer does if his own life is threatened." The new plan is in an embryonic phase and requires government approval, but there is a provision for such a force in the constitution. But the whole idea of civilians taking up arms raises concerns, as Ali Hassan, senior South Asia researcher for the Human Rights Watch group thinks. "On the one hand, the government can raise any kind of armed force provided it has the mandate of the state - and it operates under legal authority and safeguards," he said. "But there is a problem with the idea of government-backed vigilante groups, as the Taliban once were. That's in contravention of international law and not something to be encouraged." |
| Posted by:Fred |