Manzar Zaidi, Author at Think Research Expose

Posts by ManzarZaidi:

USIP Report:” Terrorism Prosecution in Pakistan”

May 5th, 2016

By Manzar Zaidi.

(1)

(Anti-Terrorism Pakistani)

Compounding these problems is the high number of cases going through the ATCs, notably due to the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act’s broad definition of terrorism. Any reforms or new laws aimed at reducing terrorism must account for these long-standing implementation issues.

Summary

Despite passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) in 1997 and, subsequently, the creation of fifty-four anti-terrorism courts (ATCs), conviction rates in Pakistan continue to be extremely low.Numerous amendments to the law have increased the severity of penalties for terrorism crimes, but little attention has been paid to court administration and case management.The current definition of terrorism includes many offenses that are also captured under other Pakistani criminal laws. Thus, ATCs are overloaded with cases both related to and unrelated to terrorism, contributing to major backlogs.In addition to long delays, procedural errors and antiquated practices plague the investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases; and exacerbating the problem is that numerous special provisions of the ATA are not being applied.The courts rely heavily on witness testimony—in nearly total exclusion to other types of evidence, including forensic evidence.In many cases, witnesses who have purportedly seen the terrorist act are actually the only people who prosecutors can compel to depose, usually police officers.Often, witnesses fail to come forward because of fear, since witness protection is only paid lip service in Pakistan.The practice of presenting stock witnesses or fabricating stories about the crime leads to multiple discrepancies and frequently results in acquittal.Any reforms or new laws aimed at reducing terrorism must account for current implementation issues, especially related to the broad definition of terrorism, absent defense councils and witnesses, lack of precise forensic evidence, poor investigative capacity, and lack of coordination between the police and prosecution.

(2)

(Pakistani police )

About the Report

This report analyzes the capacity of the Pakistani police and prosecution to successfully try terrorism cases in the country’s anti-terrorism courts (ATCs). Based on a study of 235 ATC judgments and group discussions with experts and stakeholders, the report highlights issues and recommendations related to the overall criminal justice system, implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, court administration and case management, police investigation, and standards of evidence.

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Punjabi Taliban report

May 20th, 2014

By Manzar Zaidi.

Click to read report: Punjabi Taliban report

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Pakistan’s Security Dilemmas

September 4th, 2013

By Syad Manzar Abbas Zaidi.

INTRODUCTION

The security challenges facing Pakistan are complex and intertwined with issues relating to identity, modernization, globalization and a specific set of regional and geographical circumstances. In this paper, I will attempt to approach Pakistan’s security challenges in terms of both a practical and what we can term an academic approach. The West tends to treat Pakistan as a “special case” where the State and Army’s response to terrorism and extremism is often considered contradictory or outright irrational and self defeating.

Of course, to some extent this might be so (as it is for most states) but it is also valuable to introduce nuances not least through the exposition of the seriousness and depth of the problems facing Pakistan. In fact, it will be my contention that state institutions in Pakistan indeed do approach its security dilemmas in a way not entirely different from what academic literature would have us expect of a “normal” state. It is just that Pakistan does not have the capacity to prioritize everything at the same time. It cannot fully engage with the challenges of extremism, radicalization and terrorism at the same time as it takes care of its fears of more traditional threats from other states.

The report will start out with an overview of the theories relevant to the approaches a state can and should make towards its security challenges. Then the parameters and the institutions, both existing and nascent, of most importance to security and security doctrine will be presented and analyzed. This will lead up to an argument for why a more stringent and institutionalized security doctrine for Pakistan is called for. In the end, how Pakistan is able to handle the serious threat coming from inside the country itself is key to its ability to handle the traditional threats that still plagues the country, at least in the perceptions of a vast majority of the elite and also the masses.

Even though there are many connotations, national security can be empirically defined as protection of core national interests of a state from mainly external, but now also internal threats, especially terrorism. It is easy to set down a few variables perceived by states as core national interests such as physical security, economic prosperity, and preservation of national values, institutions, and political autonomy. However, these are not exhaustive, and even the contexts of identifiable factors can vary tremendously at different times according to the grounding of these issues in realpolitik.

For instance, if a state conceives its national security to be threatened by encroachment upon a territory not actually in its physical control but to which it lays a claim to, the context of physical security for instance can be expansive, and is sometimes not easily accepted by competing states in their own contextual paradigms. The problem of Kashmir between India and Pakistan is one such issue, with the pre partition princely state of Kashmir divided into two, and one part each held by India and Pakistan, both ofwhom lay claim to the other’s portion as well. Both have gone to war over this issue more than once (1947 and 1965), with several more close calls (2002).

Thus, when Pakistan mentions national interest or sovereignty, it usually envelops Kashmir to be an integral part of this context. Influence in Afghanistan is also a contentious issue between India and Pakistan. The historical distrust of Afghanistan and its current president Karzai has led to military clashes as current as the first half of 2013. Thus, the national security paradigm of Pakistan extends beyond its physical borders to what may be described best as a South Asian regional paradigm.

National security doctrines are not contextualized just by institutionalization of national security, but the physical, socioeconomic, military and other means to serve these goals. It is rare to see a sudden paradigm shift that totally changes the way that national security is institutionalized by some particular state. There are of course incremental adaptations, the tinkering of the system to cater for changing times, so to speak.

However a paradigm shift only happens after a major change in the national identity of the state, as for instance after defeat in a war, or the sudden fading away of a threat. For example, the threat of actual war after the cold war era was replaced by a need for economic integration in Europe, spurred on by the disintegration of Soviet Union. Such a paradigm shift towards peaceful regionalization has not been on the table for Pakistan, since Kashmir remains as intractable an issue as ever, despite fits and starts to the dialogue process between Indian and Pakistan to solve the issue.

The national paradigm of Pakistan has not shifted in any significant extent since its partition as being India centric, though there have been past context shapers such as Pan Islamism, pro Western orientations, an Afghanistan centric strategic depth doctrine etc. Perhaps the most significant paradigm shaper that altered the worldview of the state was the Afghan war during the Zia era in the 80s, which ushered in terrorism in Pakistan.

9/11 has also been another. Similarly, distrust of Afghanistan has been a cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy, which remains very much intact, and regional comradely alliances with China and Iran have not been able to impact significantly on this perception of insecurity faced by Pakistan. These variables could be considered more or less constant or unambiguous in Pakistan security doctrine, amongst many others which are more ambiguous.

AMBIGUITY AND TERRORISM

Ambiguous threats to national security can be termed as the national security uncertainty environment. These are ambiguous threats, as they tend to operate outside the paradigms of a conventional national security strategy, since any such strategy would have to be against an identifiable opponent. In framing strategy, one needs to have an opponent, a conflict, a competition, or a situation where an individual or a group is trying to achieve a goal against somebody else.

Uncertainty arises when the threat is so diffusely interspersed that it can no longer be recognized by a clearly identifiable opponent, but by a more confusing pattern. Historically, in political literature, such uncertainties usually arise after major wars such as the World War II, implosion of a rival such as the disintegration of Soviet Union, or reconciliation transforming the enemy into a friend or at least a neutral. Any tensions that arise after such major shifts may not be immediately recognizable. For many observers of the Pakistani scenario, 9/11 has been such a paradigm shaper for the state.

Perhaps the biggest national uncertainty producer of modern times is terrorism, which has changed the entire context of national security uncertainty. When there is a clearly defined opponent it is easier to plan, since one then go about preparations based on one’s own capability thresholds. Put simply, if the opponent is big, the preparation to meet him face to face is big as well, and vice versa. Terrorism circumvents this symmetrical logic precisely because it is asymmetric. Terrorism vies against a national strategy by adopting niche tactics that can offset the larger resource base of the state with lesser resources. Terrorism as a political philosophy does not need to defeat the national security strategy of the state in outright battle, but to fatigue it by the war of a thousand cuts.

Thus, terrorism seeks to invoke a state of national security uncertainty by exposing the vulnerability of the conventionally based national security strategy paradigms, thereby causing the state to make changes to the latter. These changes are what the terrorists will also try to manipulate, as these can be sometimes quite predictable. For instance, the terrorist will sometimes try to encourage a heavy backlash by the state in the form of military reprisals, which seems illogical as this would wipe out more terrorists.

However, at the same time, uncoordinated and hasty operations may also sometimes cause more collateral civilian casualties, thereby turning the opinion of the citizenry against a state, and vindicating the terrorists’ stance that the state is tyrannical. This may increase the indoctrination base for terrorists, which offsets the losses accrued due to enhancement of military operations. I have used just the example of terrorism; there are certainly many other factors which cause national security uncertainty, but terrorism is the most troubling in the twenty first century.

Its inherent asymmetry implies that it is not easy for any state to be always ready to roll out a pre conceived plan of engaging in negotiation, long or short war, counterinsurgency, engagement, or any other strategy. In other words, since terrorism is not predictable in any given scenario, the responses cannot be just programmed into a national security strategy, but have to be modulated for every terrorist stimulus in its own right. As is elaborated below, terrorism has been particularly troublesome for Pakistan in producing a national security uncertainty environment, since Pakistan is one of the most terrorism beset states in the world.

National security uncertainty is not usually a result of a single ambiguous variable, but is often multivariate, with an overlay of socio cultural and socio economic factors which can increase or decrease uncertainty by changes in their contexts. Even a state which has made no enemies within and without may still face a rational choice decision about national security. Asymmetric attacks like the one perpetrated recently by a local exacerbate the uncertainty environment. Thus, paradigm shifts can radically alter the security doctrinal scenario of a country even in the absence of a clearly defined enemy, with the situation escalating exponentially with the presence of one.

PAKISTAN’S PARADIGM SHIFT; AMBIGUOUS CHALLENGES

The major strategic orientation for Pakistan has been the global war on terrorism, which many Pakistanis perceived as being hoisted upon Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11. President Musharraf is widely perceived to have colluded with US in joining the GWOT in an attempt to give legitimacy to his undemocratic regime and by propping it up with American financial assistance. What began as tribal uprisings in FATA soon escalated into a full blow insurgency in Swat and Waziristans in FATA, and saw the rise to notoriety of entities such as Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which are now household names.

Even more worryingly, extremism and radicalization has been on rise on Pakistan at an exponential level. These phenomena are much more confusing in the sense that they are widely diffused but sufficiently ambiguous in Pakistan inasmuch as they are not identifiable as an enemy per-se. Conservative values are cherished in Pakistani society, and a stream of reports in the Western media about ‘‘extremism,’’ ‘fundamentalism,’’ and the conservative mind-set of the Pakistani public as a monolithic entity does nothing to reveal the nuances of the problem. Most Pakistanis continue to live peaceful, mundane existences marked by a mixture of progressiveness, conservatism, and traditional Islamic values.

A society that displays such values is not easily understood by the West, and sometimes even by itself. Bearded men or veiled women are not signs of extremism in Pakistani society by default, but also the presence of extremist and fanatics who arise from within the population cannot be denied. Since the factors which give rise to this ‘spawning’ is not even properly understood by the Pakistani publics and policy makers alike, it is not surprising that they continue to remain ambiguous for the world at large.

The problem is compounded by the fact that even identifiable terrorist entities in Pakistan have morphed into fluid command and control structures that do not show up….

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