The Pakistan security forces’ growing incompetence to tackle the vicious militant group, TTP, is only matched by its willingness to brutally punish its own innocent citizens on one excuse or the other.
Since the media has hammered into silence over the past year, the killing of four people in Sarkand, Sindh recently has largely gone un-noticed but its grievous nature and implications remains as glaring.
The entire village is now out on the road protesting against the brutal assault carried out by law enforcement agencies on September 28, 2023. Four people were killed by the security personnel and many others have been detained without any charges.
The excuse was to trap a militant of Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA), a little known militant group operating out of Sindh against the army and security forces. It is a fairly small group with little support locally and has no known wherewithal to take on the might of the Pakistani state. Yet, hundreds of Pakistan Rangers, police and other forces swept across the village of Mari jalbani, Sakrand on September 28, killing three men and a woman and injuring scores in a brutal rampage.
Even after ransacking houses, assaulting inhabitants, manhandling women and children, the forces opened fire at the people, killing three men and a woman.
According to eyewitnesses, the security forces arrived with nearly twenty vehicles, conducted house-to-house searches, prompting the villages to seek clarification about the purpose of the raid, including for search and arrest warrants. The Rangers, in their defence, said they opened fire on the villagers as they suspected them to be militants or militant sympathisers.
According to the Rangers, the operation was an intelligence-based mission targeting a high-value individual. The Rangers asserted that during the operation, they were met with resistance from troublemakers, leading to injuries sustained by four Rangers personnel.
The local villagers said the security forces were looking for an 80-year old political activist, Haji Rajab Ali Jalbani, who had been out of politics for over two years. The security forces consider him a terrorist. More than 250 villagers have been rounded up and locked up. An FIR has been filed against them. But no action has been taken against the security personnel for killing innocent villagers.
Although leaders like Bilawal Bhutto have called for an independent investigation and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has called the killings extrajudicial, there is hardly any major public outcry against the wanton killings of innocent citizens by the security forces. There is deathly silence in the mainstream media. Rarely has any journalist chosen to visit the village. There are no comments in the media. The Silence of the Lambs disquieting.