Pakistan Military Academy has been hit by rockets. The terrorist-fired rockets have hit its walls. Have they hit the walls built inside the minds of the managers of the safety, security and survival of this state? Since the time Marriot Hotel was bombed in Islamabad (termed by many as our 9/11) and GHQ attacked in Rawalpindi (army’s 9/11 even if it does not admit it) there is no radical departure in the manner in which we want to fight the terrorists.
Are we waiting for any concessions on Kashmir from the Indians to bring down the ‘walls of hesitancy’ in our minds and go with all out force against the militants? Our security masters will have to learn to give up the ‘quid pro quo’ security mentality viz-á-viz India if we want to seriously combat terrorism.
Do we once think about the ‘slit throats’, the ‘unarmed murder’ of our men whose only fault is that they fight a war that is not being ‘fought in the manner it should’? Military indoctrination converts civilians into members of military service. The most effective indoctrination is ‘the reliance and trust soldiers have in each other’. In combat situations it is the team work that stands between victory and defeat. The army must revisit its allocation of forces between the front and the rear areas; it needs to take more drastic action to ensure that the isolated posts are not soft targets and are in fact always provided military reinforcement when under attack. For this purpose the army must fill in the gaps in its operational plans.
Our civil society may also stand up and see how the democratic and welfare state of India continues to empower its army with the ‘anti-terrorist act’ to enjoy absolute immunity in the manner the Indian army is combating militancy in Kashmir.
Despite human rights violations (which there should be many) the Indian legislatures find no reason to undo the act. Our unarmed soldiers are lined up and executed ‘Nazi style’ and all we do is to ‘reinstate’ our believe in human rights, call the DG ISI and DG MI to Supreme Court to submit their statements in case of missing persons.
The men picked up by intelligence services are not angels. Those speaking for their rights are least informed on where, when and how these militants crossed the ‘red lines’. The PM, his parliament that he leads needs to view the possibility of empowering the army ‘Indian style’ if we have to end up anywhere closer to achieving victory against the militants/terrorists.
Napoleon, besides his many qualities, is recognised world over for being a statesman who always had ‘the eye for the key point’. Let me remind our civil leadership (some do behave like Napoleon) that the ‘key point’ today is not ‘democracy and its continuity’, it’s not even NRO, drone attacks, energy crisis, Memogate, opening supply route for NATO, corruption or even injustice. It is the inability of the civil government to employ the army as an instrument of power to support our national objectives. The most vital national objective today is to fight terrorism at the national level and to do that the government must come out with a clearly defined policy.
LT COL (Retd) MUHAMMAD ALI EHSAN
Karachi
We all need to change our mindsets. And more importantly we need to debate about improvised explosive devices a bit more. we need to create awareness about IED's.
CJ Shud be sent to Indian Judicial Academy for Refresher Course….
Detection and prevention of terrorist threats can save lives and the administration should also work towards curbing the terrorists from gaining access to IEDs.
This not enough to fight with terrorists, now this is time to take action against the use of improvised explosive devices.
One has to identify the weapons and devises used by the terrorists. The use of improvised explosive devises should be curtailed.
We can see that the mindset of the people, who previously took up violence, has now gradually started changing and they are now diverging from that path.
Changing mindsets would not be an easy task. Decades of feeding has polluted the innocent minds of our people. The need of the hour is to initiate debate on important matters, particularly the mainstreaming of the aggrieved segment of the society that was one of the reasons for the deteriorating law and order situation. Secondly, as one of the readers had pointed out those IEDs has grown to be an important problem for the country, which should be controlled at the earliest.
EU has taken a timely step by providing Pakistan with modern robot system to identify the use of IEDs.
No one is Pakistan is safe unless the production of improvised explosive devices is not put to an end.
Improvised explosive devices or the “desi bombs” are extremely dangerous because they are easy to produce. What can be done to stop its production?
With the invent of Improvised explosive devices, the rate of terrorism is expected to increase in the times ahead.
The robotic technology, that is to be provided to Pakistan by EU in coming weeks is definitely going to help us in minimizing the terrorism and the use of improvised explosive devices.
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