Not going anywhere?
The specifics and exact timelines not being his forte, Ch Nisar, the interior minister, is wont to deal in generalities. Already under fire in the senate for inaccurate information passed on for the number of casualties in terror attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, an elementary mistake that a rookie ASP on his first day in office would not have made, Ch Nisar says, the ongoing Karachi Operation has entered its second phase, with the third to be the harshest – hopefully on the terrorists and gangs of criminals. This talk of ‘operation in phases’ has gone on before too and though some figures have been bandied about – such as 9,000 arrested – we are none the wiser about what this first phase was all about, what to expect in the just-commenced second and how by the time (when?) the third one concludes the peace would have been restored to Karachi. As for timeframe, says Nisar, “it would be over in months and not years.”
While both Ch Nisar and the Sindh chief minister are busy patting themselves on the back on purported success of the operation, their sense of accomplishment is not shared by many. For one, at the commencement of the second phase, the target killing has not abated but actually surged. Ch Nisar says the nature is sectarian. True, but not entirely. Firstly, the police too have been targeted. Secondly, the operation was not just supposed to go after only one or two sets of criminals but the whole lot. Thirdly, Lyari has been the scene of pitched battles for days on end between different gangs – with the rocket launchers amid other sophisticated weaponry wantonly used, reflecting little fear of reprisal from the Rangers or the Police. Rather strange, because it’s the criminals who seem to be buoyed up for high velocity action than the LEAs.
The critical aspects that Ch Nisar and the CM Sindh need to be reminded about is that arresting 9,000 alleged criminals is one thing, winning convictions against them quite another. And apparently the prosecuting apparatus is not there in numbers sizable enough to execute that important part of the operation. While trying to bring peace to Karachi, Ch Nisar and the PML-N need to rethink on their stance about the TTP and the sectarian outfits. The terrorism and militancy has to be taken as a whole, with the mafias put in another compartment but only where they are not wedded with the militants.
