The three senior executives of the central bank who were kidnapped a month ago for a ransom of Rs 90 million have finally been recovered from the forests of Sukkur. Other kidnapping victims aren’t so lucky. For over two years now, the vice chancellor of the iconic Islamia College University Peshawar, to name just one, has been in captivity. As opposed to other cases, the kidnappers here are negotiating not with his family but with the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa itself. Cavalier and bold.
Times are bad. Kidnapping for ransom has become a serious problem, vastly underreported for the major part because the families concerned have been warned not to contact the law enforcement agencies, even after a settlement is reached and the hostage is returned to his family.
Though the badlands of Sindh and Punjab do have their share of the cases, nowhere is this problem more rife than Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the tribal areas and even the federal capital.
Though kidnapping was always a prevalent crime, never has the crime been more lucrative. Come Eid time, goes the old Pashto refrain, even the tailors start sharpening their knives; gangs previously uninvolved with kidnapping – which is a crime several notches more serious than mere stealing and dacoity – have a huge financial incentive to consider a foray into it. Many of these seek the protection of the Taliban and other militant outfits who take a cut and provide a level of protection in return. Then there are the Taliban themselves who view kidnapping as a viable revenue stream.
The mechanics of this vile trade have become sophisticated enough to have developed a crude bourse, of sorts, where hostages can exchange hands between different gangs much like stocks or shares.
Given the abject incompetence of security agencies, military and civil, the kidnappers know they can operate with impunity. In the face of this, many of those from the business community who can afford to have started taking proactive measures; in some cases, hiring entire platoons’ worth of trained personnel and weaponry. The problem with weapons is that they tend to be used regardless of what specific threat they were bought for.
Yet another inability of the state to maintain its monopoly over violence.
