Sindh IG report

The army chief has delivered on his promise to issue a report on the alleged abduction of the Sindh IG. This in itself is a welcome step. The report has ordered the removal from their current assignments of the ISI and Pakistan Rangers officials said to be involved in the ‘Karachi incident’; they are to be sent for further departmental proceedings and disposal at the GHQ. The ISPR report has termed the officers’ ‘overzealous’ action a result of ‘increasing public pressure’.

So the report is out and, as expected, the reactions to it are in as well. While Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had sought the report in the first place, has welcomed it and its contents, Nawaz Sharif has said that the report is ‘rejected’ (in a throwback to another infamous’ rejection’), and that the real culprits in the matter should be detected. Beyond this there is also the question of how this affects the government. Prime Minister Imran Khan had declared the whole matter a comedy. He evidently stands corrected. The ISPR report has made it obvious it does not consider the matter to be comical, and is ready to take action against those it has held responsible. While it does sound odd that junior officers would act on their own in such an ‘overzealous’ fashion, that an inquiry was indeed conducted and a report written is somewhat of a positive.

In a strange twist, the federal government has asked the Sindh government to look into the issue of why so many police officials asked to go on leave after the Karachi issue, putting the matter of security in jeopardy. This is odd more so since the police personnel had cited low morale as a result of the ‘Karachi incident’. Of more importance, though, is the ability of the civilian structure to handle things without intervention. There is, after all, a functional policing and administrative system in place, which should be able to run cases and arrive at the truth. The case against Capt Safdar has in itself become farcical given that the main witness was later found by the police to never have been at the Quaid’s mausoleum.

Beyond the immediate is the larger picture of how relations stand between our key institutions and how the political structure can remedy itself so that there’s less conflict between political parties, greater willingness to stick to the truth and to follow the rules, so that ridiculous situations of the kind we have seen do not develop.