EDITORIAL: The nation paid a fitting tribute to the fallen of the police force on Police Martyrs’ Day on Friday, appreciating the sacrifices that officers up and down the chain of command make just so we can sleep easy in our beds at night.
It’s not just the force’s usual duties of checking crime and keeping society in order but also Pakistan’s peculiar situation, given the recent fight against TTP (Tehreek-e-Insaf Pakistan) and repeated incidents of terrorism that mostly target security organisations and personnel, that make its efforts truly stand out.
It is the first line of defence, as it proved when TTP bombs and bullets were going off all the time. Deadly insurgencies in a number of countries, from Pakistan to Libya and Syria, have proved that the police force does a better job of securing cities than the military; which is better deployed against the snake’s head – which in Pakistan’s case was TTP’s high command in the tribal area.
But bearing the brunt of suicide bombs, IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks and targeted assassinations takes a very heavy toll on security outfits. And, the police machinery has never been given the necessary resources either to equip itself properly for such a fight or take care of the families of its fallen.
As the state showered praise over the police force on Martyrs’ Day, it should also have given their material needs much more serious thought.
It’s true that we as a nation are fortunate enough to have a force that stands up and fights when innocent lives and the integrity of the state are at stake, unlike some other countries where it simply evaporates, but we must remember that most of these sacrifices are made over and above the call of duty.
This responsibility runs both ways. Officers take a vow to go the extra mile in pursuit of their duties and the state promises to finance, equip and train them for it and take care of them and their families in worst case scenarios. And it’s a sad fact that Pakistan’s politicians have not kept their part of this bargain to a large extent.
Clearly, for most of them, the principal use of the force is an asset to be used against their adversaries. Over long years and decades, this trend has thoroughly corrupted the force, because those in power would grant favours and faovourable promotions and transfers only to their blue-eyed, and to qualify for that special space police officers would have to toe their line or risk being rubbished into obscurity in the world of the civil service.
We often hear spirited advocates of police reforms on the campaign trail. But, just like civil service reforms and judicial reforms that are also promised, police reforms never see the light of day because whoever comes to power gets busy using them for their own purposes very quickly.
And so this cycle goes on. Yet despite being so grossly underfunded and politically leveraged to the point of being discredited, it goes to the credit of the force and its brave jawans that they never let the nation down in its hour of need.
It is this spirit that needs to be nurtured and there’s no better time than Police Martyrs’ Day for the people of Pakistan to push their elected leaders into finally sorting out all of the police force’s problems one by one.
The first priority must go to increasing its resources, especially compensation packages and programs for those that followed the call of duty all the way to the grave. Then they can work on isolating the force from political influence and control.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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