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US report puts terrorist acquittals by Pak courts at 75pc

Political will and national resolve are the basic requirements in the fight against terror. These are not in full display in Pakistan. For instance, the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2010, proposed on July 28, 2010 with as many as 25 amendments to Pakistan’s original anti-terrorism legislation, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 is still on the back-burner. In the prevailing political milieu, it is unlikely to see the light of the day.

Poreg View:  At a time when its relations with the US are at its lowest egg, State Department Review of its anti-terrorism court rulings will not please Pakistan. It may indeed become yet another irritant. But Pakistan cannot afford to gloss over the report since the findings are not something that is new and out of the blue. Also because Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies had provided inputs for the report. Only recently, the all-powerful institution of army has voiced its disquiet over the acquittals by anti- terrorism courts, as also long delays in prosecution. This is what echoed by the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism,  when it said the accused in numerous high-profile terrorism cases involving U.S. victims had all been acquitted by the Pakistani courts. Put differently, Pakistan’s legal system is almost incapable of prosecuting suspected terrorist even as ‘Pakistan’s law enforcement community continues to pledge to prosecute those responsible for terrorist acts inside Pakistan’.

One reason for this unhappy situation is the presence of terrorist organisations of various sizes and hues within the country’s borders and police inability to checkmate them in the face of official patronage most of them enjoy.  This ground reality is not unknown to the United States as the annual assessment, released by State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism for the year 2010, clearly states that terrorist organisations based in the tribal areas of Pakistan had launched attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the year.

Political will and national resolve are the basic requirements in the fight against terror. These are not in full display in Pakistan. For instance, the Anti-Terrorism Bill 2010, proposed on July 28, 2010 with as many as 25 amendments to Pakistan’s original anti-terrorism legislation, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 is still on the backburner. In the prevailing political milieu, it is unlikely to see the light of the day, though the bill seeks to broad base the definition of terrorism, authorize detention up to three months, and allow increased electronic surveillance and wiretapping.

The US report claims that Pakistan’s civilian government and military had ‘cooperated and collaborated’ in the US efforts to identify and counter terrorist activity in Pakistan. It adds that the United States continued to ‘engage Pakistan to ensure it had the will and capacity to confront all extremist elements within its borders’. If this is indeed so, why the new anti-terrorism law is allowed to be in limbo even as the country witnessed a high frequency of “coordination, sophistication, and frequency of suicide and other bombings” in 2010.  More than 2000 people were killed and scores injured in mayhem unleashed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and other militant and sectarian outfits.  Several attacks were perpetrated by suicide bombers and remotely detonated explosive devises. Targets were government, police and military facilities besides shrines.

Al-Qaeda with its “cooperation” with these militants in Af-Pak region remains the “most pre-eminent terrorist threat” to the US.  TTP, for instance,  gave support to American Pakistani Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to stage a car bombing in New York’s Times Square in May 2010.  “Increased resource-sharing between AQ and its Pakistan-based allies and associates such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Haqqani Network meant the aggregate threat in South Asia remained high”, the US report said. This assessment however does not gel with another contention in the report that the AQ core in Pakistan has become weaker. But the fact is AQ retains the capability to conduct regional and transnational attacks and as the US report noted, some of al-Qaeda’s “affiliates have grown stronger”, like the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al-Shebab based in Somalia.

In the regional and international perspective, Pakistan continued to cooperate at various counterterrorism forums, the American report says. But this cooperation is nowhere in sight when it comes to India and the LeT-JuD orchestrated Mumbai attack case is making no progress as a result.

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