Pakistan's Urban Security

Jan. 11, 2011 - PRLog -- Since its engagement in the War on Terror, Pakistan has faced a cost us US $ 35 billion. The IMF reported in 2010 that Pakistan has incurred a loss of Rs2.082 trillion in exports, foreign investment, industrial output and tax collection between 2005 and 2010 due to the War on Terror. Apart from that, estimates of the devastation caused by the flooding in 2010 are approximated at US $ 9.5 billion. The national economy is in a bad shape, and both employment and investment have been at dangerously low levels for an unsustainable period of time. This lack of economic alternatives and grass-roots political motivation - especially in terms of mainstreaming the impoverished - has created mammoth problems for Pakistan's overall security situation. Despite continuous military engagements in settled areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, militancy, extremism and intolerance only seem to swell deeper into Pakistan's settled (and more importantly, rural) areas.

Terrorism became an existential threat for Pakistan after the Lal Masjid siege, which was a rallying point for religious conservatives to bolster their anti-US credentials and Islamic politics. Not only did Pakistan's religious parties use this event for political capital that might finally bring them into the electoral mainstream, but militant groups also used it to declare war on the Pakistani state, thereby increasing pressure on security forces as well. Suicide bombings in urban areas, coupled with targeted attacks on military and police checkposts throughout the country - as opposed to just in insecure, sensitive or militant-infested areas - became the hallmark of Pakistan's war on terror. There is no sign of a sustained improvement in security despite offensives against the Taliban. Indeed, it was the post-Lal Masjid Ghazi Force phenomenon which targeted civilian centers and military officials in the twin-city area of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, thereby setting up and formalizing an urban terrorism model for Pakistan which fringe militant wings, sectarian groups and other violent extremists could easily recreate in other urban areas of Pakistan.

Spearhead Research Analysis - 11.01.11

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