Too many failures

“THE primary duty of a state is to protect the life and property of its people,” said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the day after the Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad.

The hotel’s private security was clearly in place, but where was our state’s security? Marriott’s security did not let the explosive-laden truck enter its premises. The 59-by-24-foot crater outside the hotel’s gates suggests as much. The truck was carrying 600 kg of TNT and RDX explosives. This heavy-duty vehicle managed to make its way through the city limits all the way to the gate of the hotel. The Maghrib call to prayer was probably resonating across the city, when this truck entered the capital which is undergoing massive construction and bans the movement of construction trucks during the day. This rule is relaxed after sunset. The interior ministry has said the vehicle responsible for the Marriott bombing disguised itself as a construction ‘dumper truck’.

As this explosives-laden truck made its way through F-6, a highly fortified area, it must have crossed bunkers and security check posts. Yet, it managed to escape the scrutiny of security personnel. According to Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, they were probably distracted by a post-iftar smoke or cup of tea.

At a press conference releasing initial investigation reports, the prime minister’s interior advisor, Rehman Malik, said a traffic police officer grew suspicious of the vehicle and radioed in a security check request. Despite this request, the truck made its way to the Marriott gates. Yet, Prime Minister Gilani main tained, “You cannot call this a se- curity lapse.” Then maybe it was an intelli- gence lapse?

During his press conference, Rehman Malik also released Marriott’s CCTV footage, which shows the truck ramming into the hotel’s security cordon. The footage reveals security guards rushing to the vehicle. A minute later, a minor explosion takes place and fire starts to rise from the truck. A security guard attempts to put out the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher. Then a larger explosion takes place. The footage ends. This whole event took about three to four minutes; the whole time traffic continued to flow on the main road.

Security had been beefed up across the city for Zardari’s maiden address to parliament. Rehman Malik said major security precautions were taken after they received information that the parliament could possibly be a target. In fact he lauded the day as a security success. Some analysts have suggested that the perpetrators turned to the Marriott as a secondary target after they failed to make any headway in entering the vicinity of the parliament. But Rehman Malik maintains that the Marriott was their primary target and the TNT- and RDX-laden truck could only enter the city limits after sunset. (According to him, the political leaders, including the president and prime minister, were the intended targets as they had originally planned to have iftar at the Marriott before shifting the venue — a point refuted by the hotel management.) So maybe they did not have a credible tip-off regarding the location and time of the attack. What about the 600 kg of explosives? This is not the kind of material you can obtain easily. TNT is available commercially in blocks at a maximum weight of 20 kg. Using that example, this explosion required the purchase and logistic transport of 30 blocks. Why didn’t our intelligence agencies get a sniff of this transaction and movement? This is where there was a massive intelligence failure. Can we hope for a policy change?

Around 600 kg of TNT and RDX were used, along with mortar, ball bearings and aluminium powder. The de facto interior minister blames ‘aluminum powder’ for stoking the fire that caused temperatures in the hotel to reach 400 degrees Centigrade and took the authorities 13 hours to control.

Live coverage of the blast showed a man and women waving and crying out for help from a smoke-filled balcony on the fourth floor. They were never rescued. The CDA’s emergency response did not have the equipment, ladders or slides to whisk them to safety. Their bodies were recovered the following morning and identified as the Czech envoy to Pakistan and his female companion.

The government has come to the conclusion that the CDA’s infrastructure is inadequate. Islamabad’s development authority has been spending more money on gardening than on security. The organisation reportedly employs 16,000 gardeners. If only they put that kind of manpower into security or rescue teams. Rescue teams did fly in from all over the country but most could not enter the building until the fire was put out While Marriott was under assault, the country’s powerful were together celebrating the success of President Asif Ali Zardari’s first address to parliament. Rehman Malik said that the military chiefs and leaders decided then and there to come up with standard operating procedures for such situations.

The interior ministry did reveal plans of implementing a massive CCTV system in all major cities of Pakistan. This is a good first step. But policymakers also need to get over the belief that “there is no way of fighting a suicide bomber”. Other countries like Israel and Sri Lanka have effectively brought down their numbers through stringent policy decisions.

It is these kinds of decisions that Marriott owner Sadruddin Hashwani wants regarding the hotel’s private security. The morning after the blast, he said, “If I was there I would have killed him, but anyway, unfortunately they didn’t kill him. Inshallah, in the future we will have more trained people.” Indeed, if there was a ‘shootto-kill’ policy in place and the suicide bomber was taken out when the truck initially collided with the Marriott’s security barrier, the incident could have been avoided. The hotel’s CCTV footage revealed that there was about a minute between the collision and the initial explosion. Shoot-to-kill tactics were allegedly enforced by the anti-terrorist branch of London’s Metropolitan Police after 9/11 in consultation with the Israeli and Sri Lankan law-enforcement agencies regarding the response to “deadly and determined” attackers. The policy was only been put in place once after the 7/7 bombings, and led to the shooting of an innocent Brazilian.

Shoot-to-kill policies are controversial, and human error can lead to the loss of innocent lives. But given the number of suicide bombings our country now faces, these could also help government save hundreds, even thousands, of innocent lives.