The enemy is within Punjab
While stationed in DG Khan and Attock districts three Rangers companies are to watch out for terrorists trying to infiltrate into Punjab. Two are entrusted with conducting “intelligence-based operations” inside the province. With actionable intelligence in short supply, as vividly shown by Umer Mubeen Jiani’s horrific assassination, the Rangers can do little more than cool their heels in the province. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Jilani was kidnapped from Multan three years back. On Saturday he was killed, stuffed into a plastic bag and dumped on one of the city’s roads. On the orange uniform similar to the ones worn by prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that he was made to wear was written ‘Daesh Al-Bakistan’ in black letters. That Jilani remained untraced for three years while he was being kept presumably in or around Multan speaks volumes about the state of Pakistan’s intelligence gathering apparatus, both federal and the one in Punjab. The fish rots from the head down. With the interior minister denying the presence of Daesh and the Punjab government firmly in a state of denial about terrorist outfits in the province, how can one expect the machinery under them gainsaying the rulers at the top? The sole justification that the PML-N has so far offered for its lack of performance is that conditions under its predecessors were even worse. Will this be enough to soothe Jilani’s family?
Can somebody make the interior minister realise that the terrorists are very much here in Punjab? Guarding Punjab’s borders is fine provided it is not done to imply that all terrorists come from outside. Any outsider would be lost in the streets of Lahore or Multan unless received, housed and guided to the target by the local terrorist unit. At this crucial juncture of the country’s existential fight one must not try to deceive oneself or others. Unless Ch Nisar fast tracks the strengthening of intelligence gathering setup, which he has failed to do for the last three years, the Rangers’ mission would fail.
