Pakistan: The threat within

BURIED in Defence Secretary Asif Malik’s comments on Wednesday to the media after his appearance before the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defence was a disturbing admission: the military is aware of continuing, and serious, threats against security installations in the country and army commandos have been deployed to protect naval and air force establishments. The two smaller arms of the military have been attacked several times in spectacular fashion over the past couple of years and each time insider information and assistance has been suspected. While information is hard to come by, particularly since the armed forces are impervious in terms of accountability and outside scrutiny, there is a lingering sense that the navy and air force have an extremism problem that has resisted whatever cure the military high command has thrown at it. Last month alone two small-scale attacks against naval personnel in Karachi, one inside PNS Karsaz, have underlined the threat — though it is in the nature of such threats now that separating sectarian motives from anti-state attacks is becoming increasingly difficult. The problem with attacks on military installations is not just the physical damage caused — planes worth billions of rupees have been damaged or destroyed — but the psychological damage they inflict. A military unable to defend its own property and personnel has a devastating impact on public confidence and on Pakistan’s already poor international standing (in the back of security experts’ minds will be the knowledge that the air force is a central delivery platform for Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent). The solution is neither ad hoc nor immediate. More thorough vetting procedures and sustained intelligence gathering, particularly of recently retired military personnel who are often implicated in attacks and are harder to track once they leave the self contained environment of military bases, requires complex cooperation across the services, which are often rooted in cultures that are insular and not easily amenable to deep scrutiny. Ideology too plays a role: Gen Kayani’s repeated exhortations that the internal threat is greatest are only a small step towards reorienting the military’s security paradigm. Ultimately, the threat can be addressed, but only by relentless purposefulness.