Karachi airport assault : Post-attack mudslinging

IN the aftermath of the Karachi airport assault, instead of looking inwards and trying to identify the loopholes that made the debacle possible, the federal and Sindh governments are indulging in mudslinging. This, unfortunately, is in line with officialdom’s conventional response after every disaster: rather than bravely accept blame and promise to learn from their mistakes, our politicians try their best to shift blame elsewhere and refuse to learn. Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan has blamed the Sindh government for failing “to put in place appropriate measures to avert the attack”, after Islamabad had issued several warnings in this regard. As reported in this paper, the interior minister had apparently written to the Sindh government in March warning it about security loopholes at the old airport, yet the Sindh authorities “paid no heed” to the warning signs. In reaction, the Sindh information minister defended his administration’s record, saying only Sindh was confronting the Taliban.

Before this war of words further obfuscates matters, let us clarify a few things. Firstly, the responsibility of securing airports is the job of the Airport Security Force, a federal body coming under the aviation division. Before the interior minister lashes out at the Sindh administration, he and his colleagues in the federal government must first ascertain whether the ASF personnel had the training and equipment to thwart an assault of such devastating proportions. Consider, for example, the claim that security personnel at Karachi airport were using ‘fake’ bomb detectors.

Training and equipping the ASF is the federal government’s responsibility, no matter what excuses are made. Regarding the claim that the Sindh government did nothing to plug the holes around the airport’s periphery, again, this is the prime responsibility of the ASF and the Civil Aviation Administration, also a federal body, which is explicitly tasked with airport management and upkeep of infrastructure. Coming to the Sindh government’s role, the provincial authorities were indeed lax in their ability to keep track of militant activities in Karachi. Counterterrorism is a complex undertaking, requiring harmony amongst the military and civilian intelligence agencies and the police in order to deliver. Was this seamless convergence in place between the Sindh police, home department and intelligence agencies? It is these tricky questions the federal and Sindh governments need to address rather than criticising each other. Instead of politicking, maturity is required from all stakeholders to jointly tackle the monster of militancy.