Pakistan Army, Rangers to cleanse Punjab after Karachi
Pakistan Army alongside Rangers to strike against extremists in Punjab.
Dunya News Report (Yaruq Malik)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Army alongside Rangers has decided to initiate a military crackdown against militants and their hideouts all across Punjab. Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Asim Bajwa confirmed that the military has already captured suspects with huge cache of arms and ammunition in areas of Punjab.
The decision to launch the operation in Punjab was taken at a high-level meeting at the General Headquarters headed by the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Raheel Sharif. The operation against militants in Punjab will be implemented alongside Pakistan Rangers which will give Rangers the power to raid, interrogate and arrest suspects across the province.
A senior security official stated that the details of the operation are kept ‘under the curtain’ due to security reasons. He added that the inclusion of Rangers had a few legal hurdles which will be sorted out soon.
“The technicalities are yet to be worked out. There are some legal issues also with bringing in Rangers, but the military and the government are on the same page,” he said.
The operation in Punjab is seen as a ‘reaction’ against the suicide bomb blast in Gulshan Park, Lahore which consumed 74 lives including men, women and children. Moreover, around 300 people were reported seriously injured during the blast.
In the past, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has been accusing the federal government of targeting Sindh for the operation against terrorists under Rangers while Punjab served as a safe haven for terrorists.
“The rulers in Punjab are not sacred cows that no one can even raise a finger at them. Why are Rangers not given special powers in the province (Punjab)? Why are they operating in Sindh only?” asked Sardar Latif Khosa, former governor of Punjab.
The current dispute between the Sindh government under the PPP and the federal government under Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz hovers around the same issue. PPP believes that the Rangers should work under the CM under all circumstances. The federal government is of the belief that the Rangers are operating under the National Action Plan which was accepted by all the parties including the PPP.
Moreover, the PPP considers the operation as a tool for ‘political victimization’. According to the PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari, the operation is an ‘invasion’ and it is hurting the sovereignty of the provincial government. The co-chairman believes that the Rangers should operate under the powers of the provincial government. He also added that Rangers have been given power that goes beyond the Chief Minister of Sindh which is not appropriate and is unconstitutional.
During a recent rally, the PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari heavily criticized the federal government for being ignorant of the constitution of Pakistan. He insisted that the National Action Plan is being used only for personal grudges against the PPP.
“NAP stands for N-League’s Action Plan”, said Bilawal.
The military establishment believes that the Punjab police do not have the required equipment or the training to fight terrorists. Therefore, the army leadership recommended that the Rangers should be given the responsibility in Punjab to track and eliminate terrorist networks.
According to experts, the Punjab government would emphasize the utilization of its own Elite Force instead of calling the Rangers for an operation in Punjab as it would create a negative image of the provincial government and its forces. However, it is said that if the Rangers do operate in Punjab, they would have the same powers as they had during the Karachi operation.
Furthermore, The Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khurshid Shah has expressed dissatisfaction over the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP). While talking to the reporters, Syed Khurshid Shah said that the federal government has made no progress in the implementation of NAP which is causing a new wave of terrorist attacks in the country.
Moreover, he claimed that only 60 cases have been sent to the military courts under NAP out of the 30,000 major cases and that puts a question mark on the level of progress the federal government has made thus far.
“What progress can we expect on the NAP if terrorism cases are sent to military courts at this pace? We do not know what happened in the Army Public School and Charsadda University. I ask the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to conduct a judicial investigation into the two tragedies,” the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader said.
In 2013, Pakistan Muslim League-N under Nawaz Sharif took power. Among the priorities was the project to cleanse Karachi from terrorism. The first step to ensure this was to create a National plan to counter terrorism which was later passed as a bill from the National Assembly of Pakistan in 2013. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif initiated the operation in 2013 under the Pakistan Rangers and gave them complete autonomy to strike and eliminate any potential threats.
During the first phase of the operation, around 9000 criminals were arrested during 677 raids. The federal government has faced strong opposition from the ruling party (PPP) and MQM. This resistance was due to the multiple raids that were conducted at nine zero, the political centre of MQM, and the arrest of numerous people belonging to the PPP.
