Business Recorder Editorial July 30, 2021

Pak-Saudi relations

 

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhad Al Saud led a delegation to Islamabad for talks with Pakistan on taking the two countries’ bilateral relations to new heights. Although these relations have traditionally been very close, particularly where geo-politics is concerned, in recent years they have also encountered some turbulence. On the issue of the Yemen war for example, Pakistan’s parliament did not accede to the Saudi request for military assistance in its campaign against the Houthis. Pakistan’s refusal helped keep it out of a potential sectarian cauldron, but annoyed the Saudis. That may be why Riyadh did not immediately support Pakistan’s position on India’s illegal annexation of Held Kashmir. Pakistan has also hesitated to follow the lead of a growing number of Arab countries recognising Israel and establishing relations with the Zionist state that oppresses the Palestinians. But when Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan visited Saudi Arabia in May 2021, the atmosphere changed and in fact improved beyond even the traditional friendly relations. During that visit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and the Pakistani PM signed an agreement setting up the Saudi-Pakistan Supreme Coordination Council (SP-SCC). Under this new framework, both countries seek to switch from a primarily geo-political relationship to one that prioritises geo-economics, a change Pakistan is currently pursuing generally. Of course, as Prince Faisal pointed out, even geo-economics requires security and stability. To that end, the two sides have agreed to work closely together on regional issues such as Kashmir, Palestine and Yemen. The discussions in Islamabad also took notice of the situation in Afghanistan. The Pakistani side is inviting Saudi Arabia to partake of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) too. And Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi did not forget to mention Saudi help in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) proceedings during a joint press conference with the Saudi Prince.

Pakistan has traditionally largely been seen through a strategic geo-political lens by Riyadh. This flowed naturally from the fact that Pakistan’s battle-hardened military is the largest Muslim army in the region. It may be recalled that Pakistani troops rescued the Khana-i-Kaaba from the Islamic militants who had seized it briefly. Otherwise too, Pakistan’s military has been viewed by Riyadh as a reliable go to partner in times of trouble. However, this dominantly strategic relationship is now on the cusp of a change towards greater engagement in economic development, trade, etc. Saudi Arabia being one of the largest producers and exporters of oil in the world possesses enormous wealth for its and the region’s development. Apart from this, Pakistani expatriates and labour, numbering currently around two million, have contributed to Saudi Arabia’s development of an alternate economy in anticipation of when the oil runs out. Unfortunately, because of the corona pandemic and the travel restrictions imposed in its wake, some 400,000 Pakistani workers are stuck here because they cannot go back to their jobs in Saudi Arabia, a result of Riyadh’s not recognising the Chinese vaccinations as valid. This implies that Pakistanis who have received the Chinese jabs at home would have to spend time in quarantine if and when they return to Saudi Arabia. This not many of them can afford. The issue was raised by PM Imran Khan in his meeting with Prince Faisal. It should not be forgotten that these Pakistani expatriates in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are a source of precious foreign exchange, which has been helping keep our external current account above water. Hopefully, in the restored atmosphere of bonhomie between the two traditional allies, this matter too may find some mutually acceptable solution.

Business Recorder Editorial July 29, 2021

Afghan war spillover

 

A pattern of Afghan government troops holding isolated military posts along the country’s borders being unable to sustain their defence against the gathering local strength of the Taliban and requesting refuge and safe passage from neighbouring countries is discernible since the militants began their ongoing offensive in May 2021 as soon as the US/NATO forces starting withdrawing. Just such an incident occurred on July 26, 2021 when 46 Afghan government soldiers, including five officers, deployed at a military post near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border requested refuge and safe passage from the Pakistani authorities. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Afghan soldiers arrived at the Arundu sector, Chitral, late at night. After contact with the Afghan authorities and necessary military procedures, the ISPR statement went on, these soldiers were given refuge, food, shelter and necessary medical care. The soldiers would be returned to the Afghan government in a dignified manner after due process. ISPR also recalled a similar incident involving 35 Afghan government soldiers asking for refuge on July 1, 2021, who had been similarly treated. In contrast, however, to this ‘pleasant’ ISPR statement, the Afghan Ministry of Defence flatly denied that any of their forces had sought refuge from Pakistan, adding the Afghan government had reservations about Pakistan. This may reflect the present tense relations between the two neighbouring countries, including the incident involving the Afghan Ambassador in Islamabad’s daughter, which led to the withdrawal of the Ambassador and other Afghan diplomats. However, notwithstanding the Afghan Ministry of Defence’s denial, it is worth noting that 1,037 Afghan government troops crossed into Tajikistan for similar reasons not so long ago. The emerging pattern therefore is difficult to ignore.

The Afghan Taliban, since the start of their offensive in May 2021, have concentrated on taking isolated posts and border crossings while mounting pressure on several provincial capitals. This is the classic guerrilla strategy of indirect approach, i.e. attacking the enemy at his weakest points, nibbling away at his outlying, stretched strength, while progressively tightening the noose around the towns and big cities. The Afghan government’s soldiers in such isolated posts cut off from supplies and reinforcements are forced to seek the help of neighbouring countries to save their lives. The Afghan air force is virtually grounded without US aid, spares and maintenance. Although withdrawing, the US has begun airstrikes inside Afghanistan, but it remains to be clarified whether they are hitting identified al Qaeda and Islamic State targets alone or also the Afghan Taliban. While US forces turn their backs on a country where they waged a 20-year war without end, the real test of the Afghan government they helped install and the military and security forces they armed, trained and built up during those two decades is now unfolding. The government forces seem to have responded to the Taliban gambit by a strategy of focusing on the defence of the large cities and towns. However, whether this will prove feasible once the war in the countryside rolls into the cities remains to be seen. Brave words from Kabul about retaking lost territories still have to show some concrete results.

Federal Minister of Interior Shaikh Rashid has said regular Pakistan army troops have replaced the paramilitaries along the border and its fencing is nearly complete. It also remains to be seen whether the fence can keep out inimical elements in a forbidding terrain difficult to police. The prospect of more refugees descending on Pakistan is closer than we think. Recently, amidst Taliban attacks, 22,000 families fled Kandahar. Pakistani diplomats in Afghanistan are reported as estimating one million people may be displaced in the fighting and a Pakistan government committee says half a million to 700,000 refugees are expected and this time round they should be confined to camps near the borders for security reasons. These may not be the only unwanted arrivals though. A UN Security Council report says there are some 6,000 fighters of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the Afghan side of the border. Hundreds of anti-Beijing Muslim (Uighur?) militants lie in wait close to the Afghan border with China (Wakhan Corridor?). Despite reports of some clashes and growing distrust between the Afghan Taliban and the TTP, their relations are intact. The TTP is centred on Nangarhar province just across the border. Al Qaeda has moderated a reunification of some TTP splinter groups, which has strengthened the terrorist outfit further. All this does not bode well for the impact of the war’s spillover into Pakistan.

Business Recorder Editorial July 27, 2021

No country for women

 

The gruesome, brutal murder of Noor Mukadam, the 27-year-old daughter of former ambassador Shaukat Ali Mukadam in Islamabad on July 20, 2021 has shocked and outraged the country. The facts of the case as revealed by police investigations so far read like some invention of a sick mind. Noor called her parents on that day to inform she was travelling to Lahore with friends, and would return in a day or two. In fact she was in Islamabad at the house of the accused, Zahir Jaffar, the scion of a prominent business family. Noor messaged one of her friends that she was detained in the accused’s house. When a group of her friends reached the house, they were not allowed to enter the premises. The police finally arrived and arrested the accused while Noor’s body was sent for autopsy and forensic investigation. Noor had suffered multiple stab and other injuries, ostensibly before being decapitated. The circumstances, according to the police, suggest the accused had pre-planned the murder since he was booked on a flight to the US the very next day. Reportage of the crime says Noor and Zahir were old and close friends, who broke up two years ago. Meanwhile the investigation team has asked the Ministry of Interior to put accused Zahir Jaffar’s name on the Exit Control List and confiscated his passport. The accused is a dual national of the US and Pakistan. The US and UK authorities are being approached to ascertain whether Zahir Jaffar had any criminal record amidst unconfirmed reports that he was deported from the UK on sexual harassment and rape charges.

This latest horror against a young woman in the prime of life comes in a long and lengthening line of gruesome violence against women, sometimes ending in the death of the victim, which afflicts a country that increasingly and alarmingly appears to be a highly dangerous place for women. Our women are acquiring education and awareness of their rights on an unprecedented scale since some years, a process that poses a challenge to long entrenched patriarchy. Some of the violence against women therefore can logically be situated in the reaction of outraged men unaccustomed to their wishes being defied by women. Tradition-bound attitudes advocate a traditional code of conduct for women that they say provides them safety from abuse. But many instances of violence against and murder of women contradict this outmoded approach. None are safe, even from various backgrounds with varying levels of education, or even privileged class origins.

The state and society must wake up to the burgeoning epidemic of physical and sexual abuse of women inside and outside the home instead of the former ignoring this burning issue and the latter taking refuge behind outmoded ways of thinking rooted in a past predicated on unquestioned male domination and provide half of our population the safety, dignity and respect that is their due as women and human beings. Change in this regard is long overdue. If this instant case provides the impetus for bringing the accused to justice irrespective of his social or elite status, it would be a small but significant blow against the virtual free for all that men’s hidebound attitudes have spawned in their treatment of women in our society.

Business Recorder Column July 20, 2021

Bring me news of fresh disasters

 

Rashed Rahman

 

At precisely the conjuncture when Pakistan is in the process of attempting to recreate a new avatar for itself as a ‘peacemaker’ in Afghanistan, the startling incident of the Afghan Ambassador’s daughter’s abduction and physical assault in Islamabad has queered an already difficult pitch even further. In response to the incident, and despite the Pakistan Foreign Office holding out all sorts of assurances of getting to the bottom of the matter and beefing up the Ambassador and his family’s security, the Afghan government has decided to recall its Ambassador and senior diplomats. Pakistan has expressed its regret at the decision, reiterated its promise of a swift investigation and bringing to book the perpetrators, and hoped the Afghan government would reconsider.

These attempts by Pakistan to keep the Afghan authorities on board in the larger interests of the current delicate state of affairs inside Afghanistan has not been helped by Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid’s casting shadows of doubt on the Afghan Ambassador Najibullah Alikhil’s daughter Silsila’s version of the incident. Someone in our Foreign Office or higher up needs to suggest to Shaikh Rashid to curb his tendency to shoot off at the mouth, especially when things are as precariously balanced in the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship as at present.

While one resists conspiracy theories, there may be room for investigation whether the incident has political overtones. When Silsila took a taxi, another man barged into it. On her protesting to the taxi driver over the intrusion, the interloper yelled: “Shut your mouth…you’re the daughter of that bastard communist…we won’t leave him and catch him some day.” He then assaulted her physically. She fainted and when she recovered consciousness, found herself dumped on a roadside. She then called a friend who conducted her home after medical attention at a hospital.

The Afghan government has announced it is sending a security team to Islamabad to review the safety of its diplomatic mission and staff.

This assault on Silsila was delivered barely a day after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Prime Minister Imran Khan ‘clashed’ at an international conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Ashraf Ghani squarely blamed Pakistan for the escalating violence in Afghanistan since the US troops’ withdrawal began in May 2021. Imran Khan tried to defend Pakistan by calling the accusation “extremely unfair” in the light of Pakistan’s all-out efforts to ensure peace in Afghanistan and the region. Imran Khan may well be sincere in his sentiments, but what his statement fails to address is the history of Pakistani intervention in Afghanistan. A brief recap may help.

Pakistan’s Independence celebrations in 1947 saw a discordant note from Kabul, whose government of subsequently overthrown King Zahir Shah reiterated Afghanistan’s long held position that the Durand Line demarcating the border between the two neighbouring countries was a British colonial imposition that had split the Pashtuns on either side of the dividing line. Kabul claimed, on the basis of this rejection of the 1893 Durand Line, that the Pashtun areas of then NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Balochistan should revert to Afghanistan. On the basis of this irredentist claim, Afghanistan was the sole country to oppose the newly founded Pakistan state’s entry into the UN.

This historically determined conflict embittered relations between the two countries, a rift that drew Kabul closer to India, presumably on the age-old basis of my enemy’s enemy. Thus the foundations of a three-cornered relationship were laid early. In 1973, Sardar Daud Khan overthrew the monarchy and declared a Republic. Well known from his previous stint in the 1950s as King Zahir Shah’s prime minister as an ardent Pashtunistan supporter (i.e. the return of Pakistan’s Pashtun areas to Afghan sovereignty), Daud Khan’s seizure of power followed on the heels of the crisis engendered in Pakistani Balochistan and NWFP by then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s dismissal of the Sardar Ataullah Mengal ministry in the former and the protest resignation of Maulana Mufti Mahmud’s ministry in the latter (Maulana Mufti Mahmud was Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s father). Bhutto feared the Pashtunistan supporter Daud would assist the nationalist insurgency that broke out after the dismissal in Balochistan as well as the resistance in NWFP. In a pre-emptive counterstroke, Bhutto charged General (retd) Naseerullah Babar with the task of taking the Islamist professors and student leaders of Kabul University who had fled to Pakistan after Daud’s coup under his wing and, with the help of the nascent ISI, train them as proxies for Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah Masoud soon balked at this arrangement and returned to lead the Panjsher movement, while Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Professor Rabbani and others enjoyed the ISI’s hospitality and training.

This was the embryonic emergence of what later became the Afghan Mujahideen, first against Daud, then against the Afghan Communists who seized power in 1978, and finally (with enormous US/western assistance) against the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan from 1979. That conflict exacerbated the internal contradictions of the Soviet Union to the point where, within two years of it leaving Afghanistan in 1989, the USSR imploded in 1991.

The Soviets had departed but the Communist regime of Najib was still in power. Eventually (within three years, by 1992) it fell but the Mujahideen then fell into an internecine civil war that only ended (largely) with the unleashing and victory of the Taliban (ironically, again under General (retd) Naseerullah Babar’s tutelage). The rest, as they say, is history.

This brief encapsulation of this complex and blood drenched history of conflict shows that Pakistan has been intervening in Afghanistan through proxies for the last 48 years (and counting), including the safe havens to the Taliban since 2001 and the necessary military and financial assistance to them to bring them today to the brink of a historic victory. It also indicates why there is so much suspicion in Kabul about Pakistan’s motives and intent. On the other hand, on the verge of a military victory, the Taliban’s version of a ‘political settlement’ (a la their current leader Haibatullah Akhundzada) is the ‘peaceful surrender’ of the Afghan government and its forces. The Taliban, contrary to much mealy-mouthed arguments about them having ‘changed’, will reimpose the authoritarian rule the world witnessed in 1996-2001. The only difference this time may be their attempts to ‘reassure’ the world that they will tread ‘softly, softly’ this time round, in the hope they will receive recognition and aid from a world and region adjusting itself in classic real politic terms to an unavoidable necessity to keep themselves and their allies safe and in the process promote their respective interests (often against each other through respective proxies).

This emerging potpourri promises anything but peace. The Afghan government forces will probably, despite their recent setbacks, not go down without a fight. Ethnic militias will join the fray against the Taliban. A country wracked by a multi-sided civil war will inevitably deliver a crop of instability, refugees, and likely spillover of terrorism to neighbouring countries, especially Pakistan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

rashed-rahman.blogspot.com

Eid Mubarik, a prayer and request

 Eid Mubarik to all friends, with prayers for the recovery of my friend and former Editor Arif Nizami who is critically ill in hospital.

Volunteers required for Assistant Editor, writers/contributors for my online journal Pakistan Monthly Review (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com) and assistants/helpers for my Research and Publication Centre (RPC). Those interested may contact me on my cell numbers: +92 302 8482737 & +92 333 4216335 or on email: rashed.rahman1@gmail.com

Rashed Rahman

Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)

Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC)

Business Recorder Editorial July 17, 2021

As published in Business Recorder:

The Afghan mess

 

Events in Afghanistan are moving at such speed that anything written or said runs the risk of being overtaken by fresh developments. However, the general trend that has emerged since the May 2021 start of the withdrawal of US/NATO troops, and which US President Joe Biden says will be accelerated to completion by August 31, 2021 instead of the earlier announced completion date of September 11, 2021, can by now be summed up. The Taliban have opted for a blistering military offensive on outlying posts, and particularly border crossing points into neighbouring countries. Having captured such posts in Farah and Kunduz provinces in the north (including the Shir Khan Bandar border crossing for Tajikistan), Herat in the west (thereby controlling the border crossing for Iran), they have now seized the Spin Boldak border crossing opposite Chaman in our Balochistan on July 14, 2021 and flown the Taliban flag over it. While all these conquests render the Taliban capable of controlling movement both ways and gathering revenue, the Spin Boldak crossing means they now also control the landlocked country’s main gateway to the sea. In response, Pakistan closed the border to both persons and goods, which was eased for only persons on July 15, 2021. Additional Pakistani forces have been moved into the area as a precaution. The speed of the Taliban advance is perhaps mirrored by the speed of the US withdrawal, in the case of the major Bagram air base secretly in the middle of the night, which offered looters a field day before the Afghan military woke up to take over. Biden’s haste to bring an end to the seemingly endless ‘forever’ war has been criticised by former US President George Bush, who ordered the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks and the refusal of the then Taliban government to surrender Osama ben Laden to the US. Bush thinks women, liberals, and those who helped the US and its installed Afghan governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani face slaughter at the hands of the Taliban. He also claims German Chancellor Angela Merkel agrees with him.

The debacle developing momentum every day in Afghanistan has produced a plethora of pie-in-the-sky thinking, which can only be seen as either self-delusionary, attempted face saving, or a hoped for triumph of hope over reality. That succinctly describes the policy statements since the Taliban juggernaut started rolling of the US, its permanent junior partner in all such adventures, the UK. Biden is whistling in the wind by positing some role ‘from afar’. What to speak of the difficulties attending any such effort, even the continued presence of the huge US embassy in Kabul is dependent on the Taliban being prevented from overrunning Kabul, a prospect as uncertain as it can be. The UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is still shooting the breeze about ‘working’ with a power sharing government including the Taliban so long as they respect human rights, which prospect is already being undermined by the strict edicts flowing from the Taliban in the areas they have recently taken. Even his own Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to disagree with such wishful thinking by expressing his worries over the impending debacle in Afghanistan.

As for Pakistan, it perhaps stands to bear the brunt amongst Afghanistan’s neighbours of the fallout of an unstable Afghanistan that includes a fresh influx of Afghan refugees, an uptick in the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s terrorism while ensconced in safe havens on Afghan soil, and the prospect of a likely unrecognised and isolated Taliban government in power, with at this point incalculable fallouts and problems. None of the closely involved parties in this mess comes out smelling of roses. But the brunt of its likely outcome is going to be felt first and foremost by the Afghan people, followed closely by the people of Pakistan and other neighbouring countries, in that order.

As originally written:

The Afghan mess

 

Events in Afghanistan are moving at such speed that anything written or said runs the risk of being overtaken by fresh developments. However, the general trend that has emerged since the May 2021 start of the withdrawal of US/NATO troops, and which US President Joe Biden says will be accelerated to completion by August 31, 2021 instead of the earlier announced completion date of September 11, 2021, can by now be summed up. The Taliban have opted for a blistering military offensive on outlying posts, and particularly border crossing points into neighbouring countries. Having captured such posts in Farah and Kunduz provinces in the north (including the Shir Khan Bandar border crossing for Tajikistan), Herat in the west (thereby controlling the border crossing for Iran), they have now seized the Spin Boldak border crossing opposite Chaman in our Balochistan on July 14, 2021 and flown the Taliban flag over it. While all these conquests render the Taliban capable of controlling movement both ways and gathering revenue, the Spin Boldak crossing means they now also control the landlocked country’s main gateway to the sea. In response, Pakistan closed the border to both persons and goods, which was eased for only persons on July 15, 2021. Additional Pakistani forces have been moved into the area as a precaution. The speed of the Taliban advance is perhaps mirrored by the speed of the US withdrawal, in the case of the major Bagram air base secretly in the middle of the night, which offered looters a field day before the Afghan military woke up to take over. Biden’s haste to bring an end to the seemingly endless ‘forever’ war has been criticised by former US President George Bush, who ordered the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks and the refusal of the then Taliban government to surrender Osama ben Laden to the US. Bush thinks women, liberals, and those who helped the US and its installed Afghan governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani face slaughter at the hands of the Taliban. He also claims German Chancellor Angela Merkel agrees with him.

The debacle developing momentum every day in Afghanistan has produced a plethora of pie-in-the-sky thinking, which can only be seen as either self-delusionary, attempted face saving, or a hoped for triumph of hope over reality. That succinctly describes the policy statements since the Taliban juggernaut started rolling of the US, its permanent junior partner in all such adventures the UK, and Pakistan. Biden is whistling in the wind by positing some role ‘from afar’. What to speak of the difficulties attending any such effort, even the continued presence of the huge US embassy in Kabul is dependent on the Taliban being prevented from overrunning Kabul, a prospect as uncertain as it can be. The UK’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is still shooting the breeze about ‘working’ with a power sharing government including the Taliban so long as they respect human rights, which prospect is already being undermined by the strict edicts flowing from the Taliban in the areas they have recently taken. Even his own Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to disagree with such wishful thinking by expressing his worries over the impending debacle in Afghanistan. As for Pakistan, having waged a proxy war through the Taliban for 20 years, spokespeople of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf government as well as the military establishment have of late been vigorously touting their newfound avatar as ‘peacemakers’ in Afghanistan, a position shockingly at odds with the logic of the 20-year old policy whose chickens are now coming home to roost. Pakistan’s lately discovered worries include a fresh influx of Afghan refugees, an uptick in the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s terrorism while ensconced in safe havens on Afghan soil, and the prospect of a likely unrecognised and isolated Taliban government in power, with at this point incalculable fallouts and problems. None of the closely involved parties in this mess comes out smelling of roses. But the brunt of its likely outcome is going to be felt first and foremost by the Afghan people, followed closely by the people of Pakistan and other neighbouring countries, in that order.

Business Recorder Editorial July 15, 2021

A long overdue legislation

 

The Torture and Custodial Death Prevention and Punishment Bill 2021 has finally reached a landmark in its journey through parliament since 2019. On July 12, 2021, the Senate passed the Bill unanimously, a rare occasion for the current virtually dysfunctional parliament. Amidst equally rare bonhomie across the aisles, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) parliamentary leader in the upper house, Sherry Rehman, moved the Bill and was met with an approving remark by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari: “It is a much-needed Bill. It is necessary and urgent.” This rare cross-aisle unanimity lends credence to the possibility that the Bill will also sail through the National Assembly and pass into law after the President’s assent. The Bill prescribes punishment to those who commit, abet or conspire to commit torture with imprisonment of not less than three years, which may extend to 10 years, and a fine that could extend to Rs two million. If recovered, the fine would be paid to the victim or his/her legal heirs. If not recovered, additional imprisonment of up to five years is prescribed. Similarly, custodial death or sexual violence will be punished with life imprisonment with fine extending to Rs three million. No person shall be detained to extract information regarding the whereabouts of an accused or to obtain evidence from the detainee. Males are prohibited from taking or holding a female in custody. Any statement or confession obtained through torture will be inadmissible and shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceeding except against a person accused of torture. Every offence punishable under the Act shall be non-compoundable and non-bailable. Sherry Rehman thanked the Senate members for their support and said no law in the country criminalised or even explicitly defined torture. That is a lacuna this Bill provides in the shape of a comprehensive definition of torture and its various constituent elements. Torture by police and law enforcement agencies is endemic. The inhumane practice is considered a routine part of criminal investigation. Sherry Rehman reminded the house that as a signatory to international treaties, Pakistan had an obligation to criminalise torture, which remains widespread due to the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators and is fuelled by socio-cultural acceptance of violence, procedural and legal loopholes and lack of independent oversight of the police. She said the sessions courts would now play the main role in taking cognizance of such cases and ensure investigations were initiated into complaints of torture, thus eliminating the possibility of police investigating complaints of torture on their own.

The Bill is a long overdue piece of legislation. Police behaviour in terms of torture and custodial deaths stems from colonial times, when people were the subjects of a foreign occupying power, not citizens with rights. Despite this abomination continuing intact after Independence, it has taken 74 years for the country to confront and attempt to overcome these heinous practices of long standing. Our police is steeped in the colonial mindset that does not recognize human beings as citizens with rights. This is referred to in common parlance as the thana(police station) culture. Knowing this well, the Police Act 2002 enacted during former military dictator General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s regime lifted even the (inadequate) check of an executive magistracy inherited from colonial times. This ‘freed’ the brutal and corrupt force from any constraint. It would be educative for research to be carried out on cases of torture and custodial death that may have seen the light of day (an overwhelming majority of such cases never do) before and after the Police Act 2002. While the Bill above finally criminalises torture and custodial deaths, etc, it has not adequately addressed the issue of independent oversight of such a well known ‘criminal’ force. The sessions courts do not fit the bill because our lower courts are notorious for the hanky-panky that is rife in their proceedings. Perhaps the answer lies in setting up an institution of police ombudsman, who would hear and independently investigate complaints of torture and custodial death. And if possible, such an institution’s remit may be extended to the equally heinous practice of disappearing, killing and dumping citizens outside the ambit of any law.