30 people killed dozens injured mostly personal as the result of several hours gun battle
The ferocious terrorist attack on the Karachi airport is a grim reminder of a state under siege with little hope of it being salvaged. The security forces cleared the airport after a fierce gun battle stretching to several hours that left over 30 people killed and some aircraft damaged.
Two days on, the country is still reeling in the aftermath of Sunday night’s assault on Karachi airport. Just as nerves were beginning to stop jangling, as bodies were being lowered into the ground and the costs started being counted, came a second, though less deadly, attack on the Airport Security Force’s Camp # 2, adjacent to the same airport. The attackers in the second incident managed to flee, unlike the ones in the earlier attack who were killed. This, if the state is to be believed, constitutes a great victory — these particular militants’ ability to wreak further havoc has been cut short. The government’s attempt to put a positive spin on the incident notwithstanding, nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact that must be faced is that what happened at the airport on Sunday night constituted a massive failure of the state, an indictment of the country’s security strategy. First, and most obviously, there is little to celebrate in eliminating men who had never expected to walk away alive. Second, more damningly, we had fore warnings. Similar assaults on similarly sensitive installations have taken place before, from the siege laid to the GHQ in Rawalpindi in 2009, to the attack on the PNS Mehran base in Karachi in 2012, to the PAF Minhas airbase at Kamra a year later.
In any country where efforts to counter the situation are genuine, these incidents would have been more than enough to prompt a full rethink of the national security strategy in the face of the internal and escalating nature of the threat. Given the scale of the militants’ assault on Pakistan’s state and society over the past decade, our security and intelligence personnel should have been amongst the world’s best-trained, most well prepared and highly efficient. Instead, once again, we find the security and intelligence machinery helpless in the face of an implacable enemy, demonstrating a preposterous level of ineptitude — just as we saw in the context of a range of assaults such as the D.I. Khan jailbreak last year.
There was lot of similarity between the attack on Karachi airport and the earlier assaults on the Mehran and Kamra airbases. All were carried out by highly trained suicide squads armed with sophisticated weapons and aimed at inflicting maximum damage. One more objective of selecting these high-profile targets was to get maximum international publicity.
The terrorists seem to have achieved both goals. The attack on the country’s biggest international airport and commercial gateway carried much greater long-term consequences for the country’s image and economy. The incident may force international airlines to review their operations in Pakistan. One should also forget about any foreign direct investment coming into the country at least for some time.
It is shocking the way terrorists carrying huge bags of firearms and explosives breached the supposedly high-security zone and entered the runway. It was apparent that the assailants had all the relevant information about the airfield — not possible without internal help.
A Taliban spokesman claimed one of their aims was to hijack a passenger aircraft. The attempt may have been foiled by the security forces, but the attackers could have been close to achieving their goal. The government and the security agencies are downplaying the damage as TV footage of a thick curtain of smoke covering the runway and fire engulfing areas around the aircraft shows.
More importantly, the attack gives some insight into the militant nexus operating in Karachi. The country’s main financial centre has long been a haven for the Taliban, sectarian militants, jihad financiers and Al Qaeda sleeper cells.
This lethal brew seems to have been responsible for high-profile attacks such as the one on Karachi airport and earlier, the Mehran base. Security officials suspect that most of the attackers were Uzbeks or from the tribal areas. It is quite plausible given that a large number of foreign fighters have taken sanctuary in North Waziristan.
But these outsiders could not have carried out such coordinated and professionally planned assaults without a powerful organisational network in the city itself. Such sophisticated terrorist actions also required comprehensive planning, finances and logistical support.
The presence of this kind of sophisticated terrorist network makes the city much more vulnerable, particularly with no counterterrorism strategy in place. The virtual collapse of the administrative system and of law-enforcement in the city lends a favourable environment for the terrorist networks to operate with such impunity.
What happened in Karachi cannot be seen in isolation. The growing stridency of the militants is a direct result of the government’s policy of appeasement in the name of peace negotiations. This approach has virtually legitimised militant violence giving the terrorist outfits even greater space.
Despite the fact that hundreds of soldiers have been killed in militant attacks, the government has not given the go-ahead to the military to eliminate militant sanctuaries in North Waziristan. One major reason for avoiding an operation is seen as the fear of backlash in Punjab.
As a result, the threat to national security from the rising militancy has become much more serious. The notion of Punjab’s safety first and foremost carries serious consequences for the country’s unity and stability. Ironically this inaction makes Punjab much more insecure in the long term. The province is the biggest incubator of sectarian extremists and jihadists.
Many of the Punjabi militant groups have made North Waziristan their operational base and are working closely with the TTP and Al Qaeda. Surely it suits these militant groups to buy time sparing Punjab for the time being.
But it is not going to be very long when they will turn their attention to their home province. They have already shown their prowess by launching some spectacular attacks in Lahore and Rawalpindi not long ago.
Also, the rise in sectarian violence has further destabilised the country. Hours before the Karachi airport attack the sectarian extremists killed over 20 Shia pilgrims in Taftan on the border with Iran. There is a clear link between the sectarian extremist group and militant outfits attacking the security forces.
Throughout these attacks, the government has been running around like a headless chicken. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was briefing the National Assembly on how the first attack was tackled when he had to be interrupted by an opposition member informing him that another attack was in progress. There can be no greater instance of our helplessness in the face of terror than seeing the official in charge of internal security in this state of cluelessness. The most tragic has been the shocking revelation that seven employees of a cargo company died in a cold-storage facility undetected. This despite the fact that we were assured that the karachi airport had been swept thoroughly and no one remained.
The chain of events that has unfolded also gives us an insight into why we have been failing against those out to kill and maim us. The twin attacks are obvious intelligence failures. We have no less than 26 organisations working on securing our people. Of these the police forces in the federating units alone are allotted a budget of Rs155 billion. The other forces, in all probability, receive more – much more.
Yet these forces, with some 600,000 personnel, are unable to defend us. Most of these bodies operate in the shadows and without any accountability. They may claim that secrecy is vital to their work but it is becoming increasingly likely that this is an excuse for their continuous failures. The blame game now being played raises the question whether there is even any clear understanding of who is to do what; and if any standard operating procedure is in place to cope with a situation such as the one that arose Monday. Perhaps the problem is that we have too many different agencies replicating work and fighting turf wars rather than coming together for the safety of the masses.
The government was supposed to streamline intelligence work by finally making the National Counter Terrorism Authority functional, but this remains in the long queue of unfulfilled promises.
Some things are so obvious that it is hard to understand why they were neglected. Laypersons on social media have been making observations for a long time about the very poor security on at least one side of the airport, visible as planes come in to land. We wonder why this was not noticed by those responsible for our security. The inquiries and investigations that take place now come after the event. We have seen this process before. Quite often such inquiries come to naught.
We hope this will not be the case this time round, given the extent of the threat from militancy and the open declaration of war by the TTP. Government and state officials prefer to make excuses for incompetence, giving absurd statements saying the firing on the ASF camp was no big deal since Karachi sees such violence all the time and that the media is mistaken in reporting it as an attack on the airport when the camp was two kilometres away.
The big success of the TTP has been in exposing the weakness of the national institutions. The executive can’t make decisions, and is scared. The lower judiciary makes bad decisions all the time, and is also scared. The military makes decisions without any accountability, and sometimes wastes the fearlessness, bravery and heroism of soldiers. The bureaucracy is mostly incompetent and savagely self-centred. The political parties are one-man shows more interested in bequeathing power to those men, children than to developing solutions to national and local problems.
Every man, woman and child in Pakistan is a public policy expert because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how bad our state is at doing its job. The TTP’s terrorism and the supporting narratives within and beyond the religious extremism that the TTP feeds on have done more to expose the state than any country or group previously had. The TTP and its backers and funders are interested in terrorising, fragmenting, frightening, and most of all, isolating and starving the working masses of Pakistan. They are engaged in a brutal and unrelenting long-term campaign to destroy Pakistan.
The Pakistani ruling class has failed to protect the working masses and poor in the country. The ruling class is interested only to protect itself. In last one decade the corrupt elite has failed to make a national security policy to counter the Taliban offensive. It has failed to defeat the Taliban ideology in the country and to tame the rising religious extremist ideas which are being flourishing without any check. The working masses and poor are continued to suffer further from this onslaught.
The working class and radical sections of the middle class needs to act now. It is the immediate task of the trade union and left movement of the country to start a political movement to counter this extremist ideology of destruction.There is no future for working class and poor under the capitalism and religious extremism. The working masses urgently need its own political voice which can defend the interests of working class and the poor.