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India-Pakistan |
Flawed security policy |
2014-07-02 |
[DAWN] THE launch of ground operations against gunnies in North ![]() Yet, necessary as an operation in North Waziristan is, an old problem seems to be once again reasserting itself: the tendency for military strategy to overwhelm and be put ahead of a national security strategy. To make Pakistain internally safe and secure, military strategy ie battles, operations, troops, bases and the like alone will not suffice. There seemed to be some awareness of this problem with the drawing up by the interior ministry of a National Internal Security Policy, but not much appears to have come of that. And where there has been work on the non-military aspects of the internal security policy, it has come in the form of the Protection of Pakistain Ordinance, a piece of legislation set to be approved by parliament in a somewhat diluted form but still with deep and very problematic issues from a rights perspective. In essence, the overall thinking on fighting militancy still appears to come down to eliminating gunnies with guns and bullets and little attention is paid to the causes of militancy and how to begin rolling back the infrastructure of jihad that has proliferated across Pakistain. Nor are the trade-offs involved seemingly ever considered. If a military operation was necessary, did it make sense to botch the handling of IDPs? If the security forces need protection in the cities when they take on krazed killers, does it mean giving them near carte blanche as the PPO has? Finally, there is the problem that even when the country's security architects purport to think strategically, they make disastrous choices. If, as claimed by former military sources, the North Waziristan Agency operation was in part delayed by concerns about the Haqqani network, can anyone explain what rational national-security cost-benefit analysis made putting it off for years a worthwhile choice? |
Posted by:Fred |