Causes, consequences of police vigilantism in Pakistan: Report

Islamabad [Pakistan], May 15 : A common misconception about the Pakist state is that it is a military-run orgsation, with the military making all internal and exterior decisions that affect Pakistan's citizens. The Pakist Police, an orgsation from the colonial era, operates covertly in vigilantism on behalf of the country's political elite or on behalf of the state for many years, reported Afghan Diaspora Network.

In one of her latest online articulations, reported by Afghan Diaspora Network, Prof Zoha Waseem presents a strong case for the conclusion that police vigilantism has always been a key tool of Pakistan's authoritarian and violent politics. She continues by saying that the Pakist security state's reliance on extrajudicial police violence has helped advance particular political and economic agendas. The conclusions reached by Prof Waseem, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Warwick in the UK, are supported by a number of sources, including media accounts, human rights records, and police investigations.

Statistics from a number of Pakist cities show that there is police-led violence. More than 3,400 people were killed in police confrontations between 2011 and 2022, according to data gathered by Zoha Waseem in Karachi. Similarly, according to official data from the Punjab province, between 2018 and 2022, police killed more than 600 individuals during encounters. As a result, during the reported period, the police have killed more than 100 persons annually on average, Afghan Diaspora Network reported.

According to this study, at least 217 persons died at the hands of the police, with 194 of those murdered in clashes across Pakistan. According to these figures, there were on average 27.16 reports of police violence each month in 2021. Last year, one event was reported per day, or an average of 0.9 per day.

December 2021 was the deadliest month, with 22 encounters, 20 extrajudicial executions, custodial fatalities, and accidental deaths documented. A total of 34 persons died in December, of whom 30 were killed by firearms in conflicts, three died while being held in custody, and one died unintentionally while participating in a conflict.

Pakistan's police force has its roots in British colonial-era orgsations. Author of Insecure Guardians, Zoha Waseem contends that the colonial logic of police still governs today's law enforcement. This makes it possible for the State to continue to rely on extrajudicial police violence. The officer class and the lower rank and profile are clearly separated by the police's colonial framework. Lower ranks are under institutional pressure to perform because their primary responsibility is to obey orders. As a result, using excessive force is inevitable, regardless of whether it is mandated by higher-ups in the police department. This strategy becomes easier to adopt when police actions are framed as part of tackling national security threats, resulting in police operating as "violence workers," according to Afghan Diaspora Network.

On a more general level, it is simpler for the State to defend police vigilantism as "necessary" when it uses war metaphors such as the police being "on the frontlines" and waging the "war on terror." A continuous lack of confidence in Pakistan's general criminal justice system also sustains such militarism and the violence that results from it.

State favouritism of selected police officers is another aspect that fosters police vigilantism. The case of Rao Anwar SSP in the 1990s is a telling instance, informs Zoha Waseem. He was trained to be a "violence worker" at a time when the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi appeared to be the biggest security danger to the State and when police officers were expected and rewarded by both the civilian and military elite to "fight terror with terror." However, Anwar (and Chaudhury Aslam afterwards) were not the only police personnel who were used as pawns to further political objectives, nor were Karachi or Sindh unique in having experienced such unofficial policing methods.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government in Punjab used its control over the bureaucracy, especially the police, to influence election results in 2013, according to research by Hassan Javid, a professor of history at Lahore. The "extensive networks of patronage and clientelism" that the PML-N developed made this possible, as per the Afghan Diaspora Network.

However, the PML-N's control over the police did not only exist at this time. Similar events occurred in Punjab in the 1980s and 1990s when police encounters first became common. From 1997 to 1999, encounters and killings rapidly escalated as they were militarized to target PML-N opponents.

This was made possible in part by a connection between Punjab's PML-N, crime, and policing. During this time, two infamous police officersNaveed Saeed and Abid Boxerwere known as "encounter specialists" and both were close to the Punjab government. The Gogi Butt gang, in particular, was known to have close ties to Saeed, who also killed gangster Hfa Baba, who "coincidentally happened to be opposed to both the PML-N government and its criminal allies."

The links between political parties, criminal activity, and the police, according to Javid, "must be understood in the context of how governments in Pakistan have historically used their control over the police to exercise a check on their political opponents." What motivates and propels the police to take informalised action and act "off the books," i.e., engage in police vigilantism, is the need to maintain this "check" on forms of political opposition (i.e., workers of opposing political parties, members of insurgent orgsations, dissidents, even journalists), as per Afghan Diaspora Network.

Zoha Waseem concludes that the Pakist state is unlikely to abandon police vigilantism as a tactic since it aligns with their view of governance. In many countries around the world, the police, first and foremost, carry out the "work" of the government. Political elites invent security risks and criminalise things and people as they deem fit. Given this fact, there is still a risk that internal state policy will be securitised. Because of the continued application of a colonial policing logic, this policy also becomes ingrained.

For any government to even begin to seriously consider police reform in Pakistan, where police accountability and openness are the watchwords, the country's current predicaments are simply too severe.

This also means that police vigilantism will, for most of the time, remain under-investigated. Pakistan has a long way to go, Afghan Diaspora Network reported.