THE tribal belt of south Punjab is virtually ruled by well-armed, violent gangs of criminals who operate with impunity from their riverine hideouts in katcha areas along the provincial border with Sindh and Balochistan. These gangs, small or big, are involved in all kinds of crimes ranging from robberies to smuggling to kidnapping for ransom to murders. They are patronised and protected by the local tribal chiefs. This problem of south Punjab makes it to the headlines every few years as no effort to get rid of the criminals has succeeded despite countless police actions and the loss of scores of lives. Another operation has been underway for the last few days against the notorious Ladi gang. It was launched after a video showing the brutal murder of two tribesmen, who were said to be police informers, went viral on social media. Though the police claim to have destroyed a few of the gang’s hideouts and arrested some members, most of them, including their ringleader, are said to have fled to the mountainous region of bordering Balochistan.
Why has no action against the riverine gangs succeeded? There are multiple reasons for that. For starters, the tribal status of the region is a big factor hampering the extension of the Punjab police’s writ to the areas where such gangs thrive. The Border Military Police are not trained or equipped to deal with them. Support and protection provided by the tribal chiefs to them is yet another reason. More importantly, the gangs are better armed with more sophisticated weapons than what the police have and know the escape routes. The government had to call in the army to quash the infamous Chotu gang and force its ringleaders to yield after weeks of gunfight and several deaths in 2016. A permanent solution to this decades-long problem can’t be found without breaking the nexus between criminals and the tribal leadership as well as changing the legal status of the tribal areas to bring them under the jurisdiction of the provincial police.
Afghan endgame
AS the Sept 11 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan draws closer, genuine concerns are being raised by this country about the shape of things to come after American and Nato troops leave. Afghanistan remains politically unstable; in fact, violent incidents involving loss of life continue apace. What Pakistan and many other regional states fear is a return to total anarchy in Afghanistan, and the after-effects of this in the region. These concerns have been amplified, among others, by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who told an Afghan delegation on Tuesday that all sides needed to “seize the historic opportunity” to reach a broad-based settlement. But the million-dollar question remains: are the Afghan Taliban — the most powerful force opposing the Kabul government — willing to listen to such advice?
At present, it appears that the Taliban are playing hardball. Their military victories on the battlefield against government troops have seemingly given the militia the idea that they can take power through force, bypassing the negotiating table. Moreover, as some observers have noted, Pakistan’s influence over the group appears exaggerated, as the Taliban are not this country’s proxy, and are very much independent actors. What they mean is that while Pakistan can urge the group to make peace, the decision would be that of the Taliban alone. Indeed, the situation does not look promising. Western forces are biding their time, waiting eagerly for the last flight out of Kabul. If a security vacuum is created in the country in the absence of a peace deal accepted by all Afghan stakeholders, the Afghan nightmare may continue indefinitely, with regional states left to deal with the mess.
In many ways, this situation mirrors what happened at the end of the Afghan ‘jihad’. A defeated Soviet Union cut and ran, while the Americans were also not keen to stick around for long after their ‘victory’. The result was an implosion in Afghanistan, the rise of the Afghan Taliban and the country becoming a hub for transnational militancy. The script may not be very different this time around, with newer, more ferocious players such as the local chapter of the so-called Islamic State entering the scene. Therefore, all countries — Afghanistan’s neighbours and global powers — must do whatever is possible to help formulate a lasting Afghan peace accord, though by no means should foreign forces get involved in nation-building. This might be easier said than done but the solution should be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led, with foreign states providing their good offices to facilitate agreement. Most of all, the Taliban must ask themselves if they want to prolong the war, or share power in a democratic manner. The militia should realise that even if they defeat government forces, other militant players will be quite eager to dislodge them from power in Kabul.
PakVac launched
THE news on the vaccine front in the country is adding to a cautious optimism that the worst of the third wave is over, or at least it is headed in that direction. Tuesday saw the inauguration of an antisera processing plant and the launch of 120,000 doses of PakVac produced locally from the Cansino vaccine concentrate under the fill-finish operation, which is the final step in the overall manufacturing process.
Meanwhile, concentrate for another 900,000 doses has been procured for processing.
According to the National Institute of Health, the aim is to produce 3m doses per month as well as the raw material for the vaccine. That would be sufficient for 3m people on a monthly basis to be fully inoculated as it is a single-dose vaccine.
Despite being the fifth largest internal market, Pakistan lags far behind in the biopharmaceutical industry that comprises vaccines and high-cost recombinant biological drugs. It imports all its vaccines, and produces only a few antisera such as for rabies and snake venom, based on simple technology that has been around for decades. No modern vaccines or any other biological products are produced from scratch in this country.
Until a few years ago, the measles vaccine was being processed here under the fill-finish function. The same facilities at the National Institute of Health have been revived for processing PakVac from the Cansino concentrate. The fill-finish step is a critical one that requires quality assurance and proper cold chain management for which CanSinoBio experts from China are lending their technological assistance.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a shifting of priorities in the health sector: one of them is the importance of funding vaccine research. International organisations, such as the WHO, and Gavi the vaccine alliance are also promoting the idea of helping countries operationalise their existing unutilised capacity to produce vaccines. Similarly, there is now a global will to assist with technology facilitation and transfer that can enable developing countries to produce their own vaccines and recombinant biological drugs. Pakistan must seize the moment to make up for lost time. The government should open up the biopharmaceutical sector to public-private partnership, or even to the private sector independently, to develop the latest mRNA class of vaccines. It can incentivise such ventures by offering tax holidays, facilitating the import of machinery, etc. A window of opportunity is beckoning Pakistan, and the country must not squander it.
