Glad it’s over
The year started well enough. Zarb-e-Azb was more or less done with the bombs and bullets in Waziristan, etc, and was ready to roll its combing and intel-based operations into urban centres and big cities. The Karachi operation, too, had cut crime in half with expectations of not just more to follow, but also for other cities to follow suit. And with security back in the green, the logical follow-up was going to be, naturally, restored investor confidence, a rising economy, stronger rupee, greater exports – the whole nine yards.
Sadly, though, not much of what was supposed to happen actually happened. Sure the military operation hastened many a bad guy’s last journey and intel-based operations did find their way to big cities. But the enemy continued to display the ability to strike pretty much at will. The numbers of the attacks reduced, but the impact did not – it increased in the last few hits, especially in Balochistan. The National Action Plan (NAP), too, which we promised to brush up on after almost every terrorist attack, is still in paralysis. How well can intel-ops go, for example, when there’s still no integration and exchange of information in the two-and-a-half dozen agencies that litter our security landscape?
Intel sharing was a core NAP requirement, yet it’s still not been given much attention. Other core features, like madrassa reform, etc, have suffered from similar lack of attention. No surprise, then, that the terrorist is on the run but his back’s still pretty much intact – contrary to the prime minister’s favourite non-CPEC claim. Of course CPEC is the one silver lining on an otherwise pretty dark cloud. There’s no denying that once it builds momentum, and the social overhead capital necessary for it is laid out, the fortunes of everybody it touches will change. But there too our internal political differences are not just raising the usual eyebrows at home, but also disturbing the Chinese now. These problems persist because of our refusal to address them. And unless the government does just that, address them, the end of ’17 might well present a similar picture.