MULTAN,May 31st:Friday’s brutal attacks on worship places of the Ahmedi community exposed the police’s poor security arrangements. A problem with standard intelligence methods is that law enforcers tend to do very little to stop individual actors or small groups.Across the world, law enforcers take security measures much earlier to avoid any unpleasant incident, but unfortunately in Pakistan this is never practiced and action is only taken once such an incident has happened. Even in the case of the attacks on the Ahmedi community’s worship places, the Punjab government set up an inquiry committee later that will not only investigate the matter but also investigate if the security was proper or not. Similarly, that committee will also gather details of the events that the Ahmedis arrange at their worship places during the year. Information: On the other hand, the Ahmedis had informed the media that they were continuously receiving threats from terrorists and had even informed law enforcement agencies in this regard. However, only constable-level officials were deputed for their security. These constables, with the help of the worship places’ administration, set up temporary bunkers outside the places adjacent to the main gates. This was all the security arrangement provided by the Lahore police to the Ahmedi worship places.Now, law enforcers, following arrests of the terrorists, said the terrorists had gathered information nine days before the attacks. But the question is what the security personnel were doing in those nine days. They are doing a lot of things, but unfortunately only after such incidents have occurred. There have been several incidents including the one on May 27 last year when terrorists attacked at law enforcement agencies’ offices. At that time, certain sections of the media had reported prior to the incident that law enforcers were receiving threats. Similarly, during the attack on the Manawan Training Center, terrorists had gathered complete information and attacked after completing their homework. Intelligence: Fortunately, we have comprehensive intelligence networks. Several incidents have proved it earlier, as intelligence officials forwarded information about terrorists and sometimes also informed the authorities concerned about possible terrorist targets. But what did the law enforcement agencies concerned do in return? Nothing, except deputing few constables at those targets. Don’t the law enforcers this way seem to be waiting for terrorists to complete their tasks? The question is what action is being taken? Is there something to foil terrorist acts before they happen? Does the Police Department have enough trained and skilled personnel to tackle terrorists? The answer is no because in most cases when terrorist take control of an important building, the authorities immediately call other forces for help. We have earlier experienced such incidents like the one on the Manawan Training Centre where, after several hours, authorities called in the Rangers personnel and even army commandos who rid the place of the terrorists in only a few minutes. Similarly, in Friday’s attacks on the Ahmedis’ worship places, the authorities called in Punjab Rangers personnel, when they felt that police and other security agencies seemed to have failed to control the situation. This was confessed by Punjab Inspector General of Police Tariq Saleem Dogar in an official statement issued immediately after the incident. He stated that teams of Elite Force and Rangers carried out a joint operation against the terrorists in both, Model Town and Garhi Shahu.


Interestingly, the Punjab police’s special wing, Elite Force, was formed only for combating terrorism. The Punjab government had spent a lot of money for this purpose. The government provided international-level training and skills to the personnel of the Elite Force. But, it seems that all those efforts were just a waste of money, as the personnel of such types of special wings have no record of their action against terrorist, except their “secret missions” along with intelligence agencies. So far, in all such missions, which had been carried out publicly, they failed and the authorities called sought help from other law enforcement agencies.