Pakistan security again in doubt after police training centre attack
Updated
Pakistan has again been taken unawares by an apparent terrorist attack. This time on a police training centre in Lahore, with a significant number of deaths and casualties. It comes just a month after the attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team - also in Lahore - and will be another sign that Pakistan could be spiralling out of control.
Presenter: Zulfikar Abbany
Speaker: Samina Ahmed, director, South Asia Programme, International Crisis Group, Islamabad
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AHMED: One of the problems lies with the fact that the police and its facilities don't have the financial capability or the technical capability or in fact even the material capability of providing forced protection to their institutions and to their personnel. The police is badly paid, it's under equipped, it's neglected and in fact has been completely neglected under the military government. So if one assumes that this is a police training camp, it would be difficult to actually penetrate it. I think you should put that aside. Yet military barracks have been protected, they are well barracked, but the military has forced protection equipment and the means. The police doesn't.
ABBANY: Now this comes just a month after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, also in Lahore, and this with the new government just about a year in office. It's as if almost the predictions that were made by the former president, Pervez Musharraf are almost coming true that Pakistan will descend into bloodshed and chaos?
AHMED: Pervez Musharraf is responsible for what is happening in Pakistan today. One of the largest and most dangerous of terror groups, the Jaish-e-Mohammed was formed under his watch. There was no action taken against the regional Jihadis. They were allowed to expand their presence in border lands through peace deals done by the military. So in fact, what the civilian government faces is a terror infrastructure that has grown because of a military regime that didn't take action. It now faces a challenge of building up the capacity of sacking these terror groups as they demonstrate their ability to operate as they did in Lahore in the attack on the cricket team and now seemingly as well.
ABBANY: Do you think the new US strategy on Afghanistan will be any help in reducing the threat of violence in Pakistan? I mean, people are talking about a combined strategy now for the two countries?
AHMED: The US has quite rightly identified in Afghanistan the police is the weakest link and has pledged to pour in the kinds of resources in terms of technical assistance and physical assistance that are desperately needed to make sure that the police is effective as a instrument that the government can use to counter the insurgency and to counter terrorists. Now the US needs to use, if this is going to be considered as a common theatre of war, that same approach should be directed towards Pakistan.
In the Pakistani heartland and in fact even in the border land, it's not the military that can effectively encounter insurgency or terrorism. It has to be the civilian law enforcement agencies and the civilian intelligence agencies. So, here is now, I think, these attacks that have taken place in Lahore, if anything should emphasis even more the importance for the United States and other allies of Pakistan to help build up the capacity of the security arms of the state to act effectively against terrorism.
ABBANY: Just briefly and finally, India has been quick to condemn this attack. It says its sympathies are with Pakistan, the government and the people. But surely it will see this as confirmation of its own accusations that Pakistan is a hot bed of terrorism and terrorists?
AHMED: I think it is very constructive that New Delhi should respond in a sympathetic fashion. New Delhi recognises that the new civilian government in Islamabad faces multiple challenges and multiple threats. It also understands the importance of both countries working together to counter what are after all threats to their vital national interest and to their citizens.
