- Title: PAKISTAN: Pakistan's top police bomb disposal unit starved of money and men
- Date: 3rd October 2013
- Summary: PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN (OCTOBER 2 , 2013) (REUTERS) TECHNICIANS USING A PLASTIC BOTTLE FOR AN IMPROVISED LOW COST DEVISE TO DIFFUSE BOMBS TECHNICIANS FIXING DETONATOR CABLE IN BOTTLE WITH STICKY TAPE VARIOUS OF TECHNICIAN WORKING TECHNICIAN RUNNING AWAY FROM DEVICE HEAD OF PAKISTAN'S TOP BOMB DISPOSAL UNIT, SHAFKAT MALIK KHAN, WATCHING DEVISE EXPLODING PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN (RE
- Embargoed: 18th October 2013 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Pakistan
- Country: Pakistan
- Topics: Crime,General,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA2S4O8E8X2X377ZZ4KAA3WOT0Y
- Story Text: A technician from Pakistan's top bomb disposal unit packed some aging detonator cord confiscated from the Taliban into an ordinary water bottle and reached for a roll of sticky tape.
With his low-cost, improvised - and extremely dangerous - device he demonstrated how he destroys militant bombs, but also revealed desperate shortages of money and equipment for bomb disposal experts.
Twelve years into the war on militancy, Pakistan's police are chronically under-funded. This year's federal budget gave the military $6 billion and the police $686 million, a lopsided allocation mirrored in the disbursement of foreign aid.
While the United States has given Pakistan about $30 billion since 2001, the police have got a tiny fraction compared with the military. A little of that reached the country's top police bomb disposal unit in the city of Peshawar.
Peshawar, the historic gateway to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan, has been a target of the militants time and again.
The city's bomb squad has defused more than 5,000 devices since 2009, from child suicide bombers to big trucks packed with explosives. Shafqat Malik has led the unit for four years.
The squad's main problem is that they only get basic police salaries and there is no structure for promotion. Without danger pay to entice more men to train as bomb technicians, 70 percent of 130 positions are vacant. The job is dangerous: a dozen men have been killed in the last five years.
They are hard to replace. Malik says bomb technicians need 10 years of policing, rock-steady nerves and special training.
"As far as the manpower is concerned, you know, this is a very difficult job, and especially in the present scenario. This is not a simple condition, peaceful conditions. This is war-like conditions. I am authorized 130 people, but I am having only 13 people, a 70 percent reduction. We are not getting them from the market. One reason is that the job is very difficult, the second is that they are not having extra benefits or privileges or something in the shape of monetary benefits," he said.
Malik's unit has ten sniffer dogs, nine bomb disposal suits and two remote-controlled bomb disposal robots from Britain. The United States donated vehicles and investigative kits. Both countries have trained officers, but it doesn't stretch far in a country of 180 million.
Two of the four provinces suffer almost daily bombings. District level bomb units have little training and almost no equipment.
Shortages mean even Malik's squad often fall back on improvised equipment or material seized from the Taliban, although it's often old or unstable.
"All the countries are busy in Afghanistan, so the collateral damage may come here and then may trickle on to other parts of the world. But this small unit is fighting this war for the world. So I request they should be protected, at least in the shape of capacity building," Malik said.
Police say they have been demoralized further since the new government was elected in May. Officials are deliberating over peace talks with the Taliban and have given police powers to paramilitary forces in Karachi, the country's biggest city.
Most disappointing of all, politicians no longer attend the funerals of senior police killed in the line of duty, said one senior officer, who declined to be identified But the bomb unit struggles on. After a July jail break freed 250 prisoners, Malik and his men defused 37 bombs and a suicide bomber the militants left behind.
"Like I have told you, in D.I. Khan jail, we went there. We diffused a suicide bomber, who was sitting right there, yes, in one of the vehicles. They left him, and he could not explode himself. So he was diffused by my team. And we also cleared the whole DI Khan jail area by diffusing more than 37 IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) which were placed at various places of the city. It was contaminated, it was almost a minefield," Malik said.
The United States is by far Pakistan's biggest donor, and more than half of the $30 billion that the U.S. has given since 2001 goes to the Pakistani military, the Congressional Research Service says. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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