A confused Sindh Special Branch losing its edge

The Sindh Special Branch, is in shambles, reduced to a twisted, contorted form of the glorious past.

From an organisation whose Addl IGs and DIGs until a few years ago, would daily brief the governor or the chief minister on the important developments, intelligence has dropped to generic information and analysis at best. The Special Branch generates a daily situation report, the DSR. It was one of the most sought after daily document by police commanders and government leaders. But many in the police do not vouch for its quality these days.

Over the years, staffed by officers posted in the intelligence outfit as a punishment, low budgets, lack of TECH INT equipment to augment intelligence gathering, they are now being routinely tasked to carry out unprofessional assignments. If this all was not disastrous on its own, the death knell was driven by the bad blood between the Sindh government and the former IGP A D Khawaja, over the latter’s transfer, and the branch fell out of government favour.

Many officers are posted to the Special Branch as a punishment and often find little motivation to perform optimally. In fact an officer who was removed from field police work owing to serious complaints for liaison with drug trafficking networks by the previous CCPO Addl IG Mushtaq Mehr was posted to a critical section of the Special Branch looking after the VVIP security.

The quality of intelligence work is also suffering as the officers are quickly reshuffled disrupting the intelligence network. “Years of field and staff exposure renders them invaluable skills of sustaining and managing the political and organizational pressures to work with utmost secrecy, offering information only on a ‘need to know basis or a deceptive one,” a senior officer told The News. “And secrecy looks all dangerously compromised at the altar of prejudices and under pressures now.” Officers working within an intelligence outfit are understood to work in divergent ways but there is always an institutional focus for accomplishing the task at hand. “The achievement of the objective is cited as a critical weak point in the Sindh Special Branch today,” complained another officer. Recently, “the Special Branch was assigned to gather intelligence on the religious seminaries in the province for their numbers, locations and details about the students. The exercise had hardly got underway, when officers, unable to withstand the pressure of religious groups, ordered aborting the whole exercise,” said a serving officer of the Branch.

The budget for the key field staff is often dwindling and no one is bothered. “There are not enough motorcycles to cover field work and that hampers work. It is specially difficult to operate in areas like Mochko and those near Hub without transport,” said a protesting source.

Similarly, the Special Branch was found compiling data on encroachments in the city. “The diversions from the dedicated tasks cause a major drag in the essential functions,” he said. “What does intelligence has to do with gathering information on the number of encroachments in the city?” one officer asked.

In the age of multidimensional intelligence of mobile communications, social media, processing analytics and software equipment, the entire emphasis in the Special Branch remains only on HUMINT. The TECHINT was instrumental in helping the Karachi operation and in beating the Lyari warring groups. There is little appreciation of the need for TECHINT at the policy level. A senior officer in the know of things confided, “there was a lop sided effort to equip the department with helpful gadgets. The project started with purchase of miniature cameras but “the equipment did not meet the required technical parameters and the entire project was dropped.” As the police is the first line of defence against crime, it is imperative that the Special Branch is resurrected to meet the challenges of the day.

(The earlier part was carried in The News issue of Tuesday, Feb 19)