Three policemen killed this month, top officer says cops are easy targets in Pakistan since they live in civilian areas and are the first line of defence.
The rising violence on Pakistan’s western frontier and in Balochistan province is taking a heavy toll on its security forces.
Police officers have been high-risk targets of late, with additional inspector general (AIG) telecommunications Hamid Shakeel and two other policemen being the latest to be killed in a suicide attack in Quetta this month.
Shakeel’s was the fourth attack in the last six months in which senior police officers were targeted.
Across the country, Pakistan has lost as many as 834 policemen and constables since 1979.
In July this year, Quaidabad police superintendent Mubarak Shah Achakzai was gunned down along with three police guards shortly after leaving for work. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, a police officer told the Dawn newspaper: “The macabre act shows how much these terrorists loathe police officers…we expect more attacks in the near future.”
Four days before Achakzai was killed, a district police officer was shot in a deadly attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban in the border town of Chaman, one of the four towns in Qilla Abdullah district.
Based on how their security is organised, Balochistan is divided into two areas – A and B – with the police being entirely responsible for maintaining law and order in areas that fall under category A. Tellingly, 90 per cent of the militant crimes occur in the area covered by the police.
The primary reason for the attacks is the high level of organisation in police ranks as that seems to incite violence by terrorist outfits, Siddique Baloch, editor of Balochistan Express told Dawn.
At the turn of the century, separatists and militants in Baloch would invariably target police constables in Quetta, mainly because most hailed from Punjab. With changes in the ethnic composition of the police department, militant and sectarian outfits, particularly Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) or the TTP, began targeting policemen.
Abdul Razzaque Cheema, the capital city police officer (CCPO) of Quetta, told Dawn that the same set of targeted killers, in fact, attack officers under different names — the LeJ, the TTP, the IS, and the LeJ Alami.
“There are around 10 to 12 hardcore militants of the LeJ who carry out attacks in Quetta. Their aim is to first target police — the first line of resistance,” he said.
“Police constables and officers live among the civilian population…they are visible and perform their duties openly. That is why terrorists kill them before they move on to their next targets…the police stand as a rock between them and civilians,” he added.
The state has cracked down on militants and robust action has been taken, but perhaps that is the reason why militants are striking back, analysts in Pakistan say.