I am trying to work out which one is the greater challenge.
That there are Taliban in Swat or that the police and judiciary fall short of minimum standards.
To say that a militia of a few thousand fighters at best, is likely to run over a 600,000 strong Pakistan Army stretches creduility. Even the mighty Rustum feared taking on such odds in his own legends. That Taliban can run over Pakistan is similar to chicken little’s hue and cry about the sky losing altitude. However, absence of consequences for criminals CAN plunge the country into lawlessness.
In fact it already has and that is the clear and present danger.
Defense from external threats has always been on top of national agenda without exceptions. However, it appears that defense from internal threats, or law and order has been relegated to use in slang.
The per capita expenditure on law enforcement in District Rawalpindi, one of most well policed district, is Rs350 per person per year, with one police person for every 800 people. I don’t believe a scholarly effort is required to prove that this department of the state is badly dysfunctional.
The Lahore high court has 36 judges that adjudicate the disputes of about 90 million people. That is less than one Judge per 2.5 million people. No wonder LHC and its lower courts have 1.3 million cases pending as of April 2009
Peshawar High court has 13 judges that mind the disputes of 21 million people. That is one judge for every 1.6 million people. PHC and lower courts had 200,000 pending cases as of 1 April 2009
We need to fight the battle in NWFP. However, fighting a battle without a strategy for winning the war is another fanciful enterprise. That containing the Taliban will somehow cause the people of Pakistan to be more satisfied with their grievious lot is silly. To expect that if someone’s daughter is raped and there is no justice in court, they will sit tight and not pick up a gun or an axe and go for walk, is rather optimistic.
One in ten registered FIRs make it to court. That coupled with 1.6 million pending cases in the court system of Pakistan, says we are sitting on dynamite, getting dryer by the day, and starting to crackle.
Taliban is not the core issue. The core issue is effective policing and dispensation of justice.
It is not a tall order to appoint another 1,000 judges countrywide. Such a measure may re-motivate people to respect the law. That is a priceless dividend for a cost which is slender in comparison. Yet, the police is far from effective and the judiciary remains crippled.
Such neglect may be deliberate on the part of the government, but it seems there is a lot more that certain organized segments of the society, particularly the media, and civil society can do to motivate the government to focus on this issue. If a thousand militants, in an ex-tourist resort, armed with guns, can literally grip the attention of the world, what can a million organized voices armed with pens do.
Pakistan basically Taliban state
This notion that Taliban are not an isolated phenomenon but a symptom of the deeply entrenched religious extremisms within Pakistani society, is taking prominence.
This article is written with a certain mind but has some valid points.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/05/09/9404 061-sun.html
[quote]
There is frantic concern in Washington and elsewhere that Pakistan has reached its tipping point and might succumb to the Taliban forces entrenched barely 80 km (50 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.
But the concern is misleading. A country of some 160 million Muslims is not about to be overrun by the Taliban. On the contrary, Pakistan is more or less a Taliban state shaped by its origin and history.
[/quote]
…
[quote]
To recall this history is to have an inkling of the sort of a country that emerged as a result of terrorism followed by ethnic cleansing of the non-Muslim population — most Hindus and Sikhs left or were forcefully driven out from present-day Pakistan.
Subsequently, the Pakistani elite declared the Ahmadiyyas — a small peace-loving sect of minority Muslims — to be non-Muslims, and persecuted them as the harbinger of further bigotry to be unleashed in the slide of Jinnah’s Pakistan into a Taliban state.
[/quote]
I agree with Xo when said: “This is not an either or proposition, i.e., fix the justice system and therefore the taliban will disappear. This is an AND proposition, suggesting a complement to the military action on Taliban.”
I also agree with Xo when said: “Countries with robust judicial systems don’t have militias running on the street.”
A fair and just society even when poor has less problems. Taliban flourish in Pakistan because there is no social justice in Pakistani society. The lack of effective fair and just law and order system provides fertile ground for those who take laws in their own hands. That is what Taleban are doing in the Frontier. In the absence of honest system they have taken law in their own hand. The two issues are connected and must be viewed together.
The Taliban ARE the core issue. teh only issue for Pakistan’s survival today. It is teh biggest threat faced by Pakistan today. They have killed more Pakistanis than India has in all the wars put together, they have captured Pakistan territory. They are Arab and other foreigners who rape Paksitani women and girls. Flog our people. Cut the hands of Pakistanis and are displacing thousands of Pakistanis from their homes. YES THEY ARE THE CORSE ISSUE AND BIGGEST ENEMIES OF PAKISTAN.
BBC
The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows In The Cave
Last Updated: Friday, 14 January, 2005, 11:53 GMT
The Power of Nightmares assesses whether the threat from a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. In the concluding part of the series, the programme explains how the illusion was created and who benefits from it.
In the wake of the shock and panic created by the devastating attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001, the neo-conservatives reconstructed the radical Islamists in the image of their last evil enemy, the Soviet Union - a sinister web of terror run from the centre by Osama Bin Laden in his lair in Afghanistan.
There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas, and who will use the techniques of mass terror - the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear.
But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organisation waiting to strike our societies is an illusion.
Wherever one looks for this al-Qaeda organisation, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the “sleeper cells” in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy.
But the reason that no-one questions the illusion is because this nightmare enemy gives so many groups new power and influence in a cynical age - and not just politicians.
Those with the darkest imaginations have now become the most powerful.
In part one, the programme looked at the origins of the neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists in the 1950s.
The second part of the series examined how the radical Islamists and neo-conservatives came together to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Power of Nightmares will be broadcast over three nights from Tuesday 18 to Thursday, 20 January, 2005 at 2320 GMT on BBC Two. The final part has been updated in the wake of the Law Lords ruling in December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was illegal.
The people of Pakistan and India do not have to remain hostage to the rigid attitudes of their governmnets or that of vested interests or fringe groups that espouse an ideology of confrontation as the defining piller of their identity. It is in the interest of governments to keep their people in a state of fear, from an aggressive neighbour, an amorphous enemy, terror, an ideology or any other bogey man. It makes their job easier. They promise to protect the people from these fearful apparitions, hoping to divert attention from more substantive issues. Around the world they have been largely successful with this strategy. But it is not in the interest of the people that are victims of such propoganda.
A farily complete treatment of this idea can be found in the BBC documentary : The power of nightmares.
You can search for it on the net or
check out the wicki entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmar es
bbc report at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3970901.stm
download it here
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmare s
or
or see it on youtube / google
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-588381307 5683695465
@Anil Hindustani:
Thanks for your valuable advice. Now that you know that sponsoring terrorism burns the sponsor also, would you please stop sponsoring terrorism in Sri Lanka and state terrorism in Kashmir and Gujarat?
I think what is being said is that the battle with the Taliban must be fought and won. However, without a vision / strategy that anticipates / reaches beyond the battle risks losing the war which is against the forces of anarchy and injustice. This is not an either or proposition, i.e., fix the justice system and therefore the taliban will disappear. This is an AND proposition, suggesting a complement to the military action on Taliban.
Unless off course the view is that because electricity does not work and the roads are broken, fixing the police and justice system is a luxury. Safety and justice are more basic needs than electricity and roads. They relate to life and liberty. Would you rather have electricity and roads or your life and liberty.
Countries with robust judicial systems don’t have militias running on the street. Working states don’t have failed police and judiciary. And struggling states don’t have working police and judiciaries.
There can be no two opinions about the law and order and judiciary issue… However… why juxtapose it against a war that is for our survival as a country?
This war must be fought and won. There are no two ways about it…