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Editorial: Prosecuting Pakistan’s “terrorists”

The visiting British prime minister, Mr Gordon Brown, said in a news conference with President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad on Sunday that “it was time for Islamabad to take action against terrorists”, and that “three-quarters of the most serious terror plots investigated by British authorities had links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan”. He had flown in from New Delhi and was apparently trying to defuse the post-Mumbai Indo-Pak tension.

Mr Brown was also speaking for the United Kingdom when he requested prompt action against the organisations banned by the UN. He asked if it was possible for British investigators to question the arrested leaders of the banned outfits, but pledged to make available to Pakistan all the evidence his country had against the terrorists. On the Pakistani side, President Zardari assured Mr Brown that “Pakistan was determined to act against those who were behind the Mumbai attacks”.

That is where the sticking point is. Friends of Pakistan in the West have already arrived at the conclusion that those arrested are terrorists while the Pakistani position still is that it needs evidence to proceed against them. Pakistan has asked India for any evidence it may have against Jama’at-ud Dawa, and this request is not a stonewalling device; any process under law will require evidence for conviction, and if evidence is lacking, a Pakistani court would have to let the “terrorists” go. Needless to say, all the arrested leaders will soon challenge their arrests in the court of law. While it may be all right to tell the court that the ban was carried out under an international obligation, it may be embarrassing to keep the banned elements under arrest indefinitely.

Pakistan’s request for justiciable evidence to India gets lost in the understandable fury of the media and the Indian common man who is influenced by the media. The politicians are also not too willing to pay heed to Pakistan’s request possibly because of the coming elections in India. But if Pakistan has to move, it must do so under its laws. There is no martial law in Pakistan and the constitution is fully in operation. Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has been saying harsh things about Pakistan, has answered Pakistan’s question by saying that India can make available whatever evidence it has but the investigation is ongoing and “India has not come to [a final] conclusion”.

If that is the case, then Pakistan’s side of the story must be considered. It has complied with the resolution of the UN Sanctions Committee and disbanded Jama’at-ud Dawa and put its leaders under arrest together with the leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad. When Mr Brown says “take action”, he surely means that Pakistan should put the accused persons through the legal process and punish them. Here is where we come to the tricky terrain of getting the terrorists convicted under the prevailing rules of evidence. There is nothing more disastrous than putting the arrested men through a court process only have the court let them go.

The United States has been dogged by the same problem. It has the terrorists in custody but will not take them to court inside the US because it doesn’t have the evidence to get them properly convicted. Wherever the evidence was to hand the terrorists were properly convicted and are now serving long sentences. The others are languishing at the Guantanamo Bay “facility”. To be able to get himself put through the normal process of law, the planner of the 9/11 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, has announced his intention to “confess”, thus absolving the US of the obligation of producing evidence, which it may not have.

Pakistan is under pressure internationally, but a democratically elected government in Islamabad is also wary of the domestic pressure which is mounting by the day. Whatever may be the cause, the common man is sceptical about the banning of Jama’at-ud Dawa which he thinks is a charity organisation with impressive record. Given the depth of the penetration of its educational and public health institutions in the country, it could be Pakistan’s largest charity organisation. Maybe this is a ruse, but it makes things difficult for a prosecuting government which can be toppled by reason of losing its majority in parliament.

Some Indians are waking up to the problem faced by Islamabad. It will go against the interest of India if a perceived “pro-India” government is toppled and someone else too scared of cooperating with India is brought to power. Pakistan’s terrorist problem is very severe. It needs international assistance to tackle the Taliban and Al Qaeda now clearly getting the upper hand in a large part of Pakistan. The biggest help may come from an accelerated normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan instead of an escalation of hostilities. *

Second Editorial: Bringing expatriate money

Speaking at a meeting in Washington, ex-World Bank vice-president and ex-finance minister of Pakistan, Mr Shahid Javed Burki, warned that Pakistan was too busy paring down the economy instead of creating enabling conditions for employment, which is bound to decrease dangerously in the coming days. He also said, “There are 800,000 to a million Pakistanis living in the US and Canada, with a total annual income ranging between $50 billion and $60 billion”. He thought incentives should be created to bring this money into Pakistan.

Many people in Pakistan have often referred to the savings of the 7 million Pakistanis living abroad, but have leaned on the emotion of anti-India nationalism to bring them into Pakistan. Pakistan tried to do this in the wake of its nuclear test in 1998 but failed to bring in dollars on the basis of emotion. Today, the trend is for dollars to fly out, not fly in. Unless a policy of right incentives accompanied with a realistic strategy against terrorism is put in place, the dollars won’t come in. Remember, too, that many expatriate Pakistanis who already fund the terrorists may not be attracted even then. *

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