One incident after another and security lapse after lapse have completely exposed the extremely substandard capabilities of the country’s security forces to secure even themselves. Sunday’s terrorist attack on Faisal Base, Karachi, is an addition to a number of attacks in which terrorists have been successful in hitting out at the heart of extremely sensitive strategic locations.
Sunday’s incident was a strange attack; the terrorists didn’t attack the main gate or entrance of the crucially important naval base but reached the center of the base and destroyed a sophisticated aircraft before anyone realized what was going on.
On October 10, 2009, a number of terrorists not only entered the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi but also took dozens of people hostage there for hours. Many people were killed during this terrorist operation on Pakistan’s armed forces’ headquarters.
What is alarming is that in many of these attacks, terrorists reach the place of parade or gathering of security men undetected. Once, the mess hall of the country’s most efficient and trained force, the SSG, was attacked and terrorists killed tens of young officials in cold blood. To this day, the nation does not know how terrorists managed to reach the point where the SSG commandos were dining.
Terrorists have launched similar attacks on different military installations during the last few years without facing any major resistance, which clearly shows there is no concerted security plan to tackle such attacks, offer maximum possible resistance or fight terrorists and stop them from penetrating extremely-sensitive locations.
It is very strange that after an annual budget of Rs600 billion and continuous training from Americans, the Pakistani forces are still unable to even make entry points of their sensitive installations foolproof. Instead of giving full attention to improving their capabilities and removing flaws, the Army’s media persons come out after every mega failure and try to prove in their articles that the incident was not a security failure or lapse but happened because of new techniques used by the terrorists. These embedded journalists also argue that calling these incidents security lapses or security failures is a disservice to Pakistan and tantamount to helping the enemies of Pakistan who want to capture strategic assets of the country.
In this way, the security establishment saves itself from any kind of criticism and no real changes are undertaken to improve the capability of security forces to tactfully tackle the terrorist attacks.
Incidents of the last few weeks have now established that the country’s security and intelligence systems are profoundly inefficient if not a total failure. It is now up to those sitting at the top to decide whether they will allow an independent commission to be set up to make inquires so that flaws and weaknesses can be identified in a professional way and a national strategy adopted to surmount a devastating security situation.
By: Umer Waqqas
Sunday’s incident was a strange attack; the terrorists didn’t attack the main gate or entrance of the crucially important naval base but reached the center of the base and destroyed a sophisticated aircraft before anyone realized what was going on.
On October 10, 2009, a number of terrorists not only entered the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi but also took dozens of people hostage there for hours. Many people were killed during this terrorist operation on Pakistan’s armed forces’ headquarters.
What is alarming is that in many of these attacks, terrorists reach the place of parade or gathering of security men undetected. Once, the mess hall of the country’s most efficient and trained force, the SSG, was attacked and terrorists killed tens of young officials in cold blood. To this day, the nation does not know how terrorists managed to reach the point where the SSG commandos were dining.
Terrorists have launched similar attacks on different military installations during the last few years without facing any major resistance, which clearly shows there is no concerted security plan to tackle such attacks, offer maximum possible resistance or fight terrorists and stop them from penetrating extremely-sensitive locations.
It is very strange that after an annual budget of Rs600 billion and continuous training from Americans, the Pakistani forces are still unable to even make entry points of their sensitive installations foolproof. Instead of giving full attention to improving their capabilities and removing flaws, the Army’s media persons come out after every mega failure and try to prove in their articles that the incident was not a security failure or lapse but happened because of new techniques used by the terrorists. These embedded journalists also argue that calling these incidents security lapses or security failures is a disservice to Pakistan and tantamount to helping the enemies of Pakistan who want to capture strategic assets of the country.
In this way, the security establishment saves itself from any kind of criticism and no real changes are undertaken to improve the capability of security forces to tactfully tackle the terrorist attacks.
Incidents of the last few weeks have now established that the country’s security and intelligence systems are profoundly inefficient if not a total failure. It is now up to those sitting at the top to decide whether they will allow an independent commission to be set up to make inquires so that flaws and weaknesses can be identified in a professional way and a national strategy adopted to surmount a devastating security situation.
By: Umer Waqqas
