'Our police have miserably inadequate resources for combatting terrorism,' acknowledged Sharfuddin Memon, who heads the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee, a state-run crime watchdog. --PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
KARACHI - A SPECTACULAR commando-style assault on a Pakistani police training school and a wave of suicide attacks have exposed a cash-strapped force woefully incapable of fighting insurgents, experts say.
Most officers are ill-trained, poorly educated and badly paid - a regular constable's salary is just US$100 (S$150) a month, and his family is paid US$6,000 if he is killed in the line of duty.
Resolute to modernise police
THE police are so technologically under-resourced that the military or intelligence agencies frequently need to be called in, even to trace a mobile phone call.
'This is a minimum requirement for police,' the Liaison Committee's Memon admitted. 'They lack adequate technological support, technical expertise and professional training.'
They are also badly equipped, lacking the resources even for what in many countries would be regarded as basic police work.
'Our police have miserably inadequate resources for combatting terrorism,' acknowledged Sharfuddin Memon, who heads the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee, a state-run crime watchdog.
'They have been in this war without proper equipment and skill.'
Security forces, elite squads, the army and police took nearly eight hours on Monday to overpower a group of attackers who stormed a police training school near the eastern city of Lahore.
Eight police recruits were killed in the fierce firefight, highlighting the particular dangers that security forces face.
Pakistan's regular police force numbers 383,000, according to figures from the National Police Bureau, out of a population of more than 160 million.
The country has been hammered by extremist violence blamed on Taleban- and Al-Qaeda-linked militants - suicide and bomb blasts have killed nearly 1,700 people in the last two years.
Police are a favourite target. The Police Bureau says the number of attacks against officers soared from 113 in 2005 to 1,820 in 2007.
Last Friday a suicide bomber attacked a packed mosque in the northwest town of Jamrud whose main congregation was tribal police and paramilitary, killing around 50 people.
A top police official in the flashpoint North West Frontier Province said even the Islamic extremists paid better.
'Terrorists pay 15,000 rupees (S$446) each to their soldiers and pay the families of suicide bombers three times what a policeman's family gets,' the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. -- AFP
