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.
@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…
Naivety of the urban educated Pakistanis (in fact globally) is just stinking. It’s not a handful vs 600,000. It’s the mere facts that armies across the world don’t get trained to deal with guerrilla warfare so numbers don’t matter.
It seriously makes me angry and sad that at a moment when we are facing the threat to our existence not as a nation state alone but also as a society, these nerds come up and try to pretend if Taliban threat is overblown or American conspiracy or is not the core issue. No society is perfect, neither is ours but we shouldn’t be bogged down by these sick thoughts who compare Taliban with justice system and judicial reforms.
i disagree that there is a single core issue that is causing the rot in the Pakistani society. We have a whole raft of serious problems which are working in tandem to destroy the very foundations of nationhood. chief among them injustice, unkindness to each other, extremism, sectarianism, provincialism, ethnic hatreds, etc. readily come to mind.
khurram farooqui has made a number of good points in his post. a lot of our ills are fundamental character flaws within our own beings.
what one notices also is that on these boards we all come and harp our tunes and move on. there is no coherent effort from any direction, be it the readership or the site administrators, to abstract worthwhile suggestions and integrate them into an approach that can be used profitablly to change our outlook as a society.
oh well …