SINCE the killing of Chaudhry Aslam, there’s been growing alarm about the onslaught against Karachi’s police officers. The number of officers killed on the job has been steadily increasing each year, from 41 in 2009 to more than 160 in 2013.
The renewed interest in this trend is primarily a manifestation of fears about the outlawed Talibanisation of Pakistan, with each cop killing being viewed as a step further in the Pakistani Taliban’s encroachment of Karachi. But the violence against police officers, and the official and public response to it, has far greater implications for Pakistan’s future than in the context of the fight against the Taliban.
The killing of police is hardly a new issue in Karachi, a city in which officers who do their duty, and those who don’t, are equally under threat of violence. When the police stay within their jurisdiction and perform their role as law-enforcers, they become the target of reprisal attacks by the groups they pursue. For example, Aslam made it to the Taliban’s hit list for capturing and killing numerous militants. Similarly, dozens of police officers involved in Operation Clean-Up in the early 1990s have been abducted or killed over the years.
Ironically, the police’s failure to enforce the law also leads to the targeting of officers. Karachi is a savage city, the battleground of various violent actors, including political parties, criminal gangs, militant groups and extortionists. The police are yet another violent actor in this embattled landscape: they too are armed, and they too compete for the same resources that criminal elements do — the proceeds from smuggling, prostitution, extortion, and land grabs.
The competition for these resources is brutal, and police officers can be killed alongside gangsters and smugglers for taking too much of their share or trespassing on a rival’s turf or takings.
Much has been written about how the police need to be made less corrupt and apolitical, not only to improve law-enforcement but also, it increasingly seems, for the sake of their own safety. But the security of police officers also has broader relevance for law and order in the city, and Pakistan.
It is troubling that the government has failed to respond to this violence by providing the police with more recruits, training, better equipment and support from paramilitary and military forces, when needed. Rather than reinvigorate the police, the state’s response is often to replace them: think of the Rangers carrying out special operations in Karachi or the Frontier Corps reigning in Balochistan.
Even in Swat, where the army was meant to hand over security to local police, it’s instead establishing a cantonment to make its presence permanent and pervasive.
The police force’s growing inability to protect itself, and the state’s instinct to replace rather than reform, risk making the institution redundant. As it is, many officers in Karachi are refusing to show up for duty, while others stay sequestered in thanas, scared of what might befall them if they play an active role.
The gradual withdrawal of the police from the urban landscape will only exacerbate existing problems, not least, it will allow violent groups to proliferate and operate unchecked. Even more than it is today, Karachi will become a city of enclaves, each guarded by a private militia, each primed to fight its neighbours. And in a fast urbanising Pakistan, other cities may start to face similar challenges in the absence of strong policing.
The retreat of the police from its traditional law-enforcing role will also result in the expansion of the military’s role in domestic law-enforcement. We have already seen this cycle play out in Balochistan, and also witnessed its grave consequences.
Militaries, even when they operate in a domestic context, continue to tout the mantra of national security to avoid transparency and accountability. They also impose security from the top down as a self-serving entitlement, rather than a service to the public. But the domestic need for policing has little to do with securing the nation — it’s about maintaining order from the bottom up, community by community.
The difference between the army and the police is the difference between orders and negotiations, protocol and understanding, big picture and hyper local, absolute means and arbitration. Communities need policing, not securing, to function and endure.
Moreover, a growing military role in domestic law and order would enable the army to hold on to power and large budgets at a time when the institution should be scaling back to create more space for civilian governments. Ensuring that the police feel safe enough to do their jobs is essential for Pakistan’s democratic trajectory.
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