Revamping the Levies Force

By Siddiq Baluch

The Provincial government did a very good job by reviving the Levies force in Balochistan reversing the short sighted decision of former President General (retired) Pervez Musharraf who disbanded the force and merged it with the regular police.

The General considered Levies personnel as personal servants of Sardars and not an official force of the State of Pakistan. It was the level of misinformation and disinformation from the police officials to the Head of State. The top brass under Pervez Musharraf was against the Levies force and they ignored several unanimous resolutions of the Balochistan Assembly opposing merger of Levies with the regular police. The public opinion in Balochistan is against the police for the reason of ‘Thana culture’ and the patronage of organized crime in the police controlled areas in the past.

Thus the people, through their popular opinion, forced the Government to reverse its unwise decision and revive the Balochistan Levies as modern and more reliable community police.

In any case, the credit goes to the present Government to concede the demand for revival of Levies in Balochistan. Now the Chief Minister had pledged to make the force modern and well equipped meeting the future challenges ahead. We have been offering comments in the subject more frequently advising the Government to reorganize the force on more modern line with better training and equipment for which a substantial allocation of resources should be made. Balochistan Levies covers more than 90 per cent of the territory and at the time of disbanding it, the Provincial Government spent merely half a billion on it and on Police more than Rs five billions with a responsibility of less than 10 per cent territory. The IGP’s car cost ten times more than any provincial minister. He did not stop there and he used his influence got a plane from the funds allocated for administration of justice.

The point is that Balochistan Levies covers more than 90 per cent of the territory than it should get matching resources, manpower, equipment, weapons and communication network. It should be better trained and be able to perform the job of a perfect community police in whole of Pakistan. For this, we had suggested that the Government should select at least 100 officers of grade 17 through the public Service Commission and they should be recruited as Assistant Superintendents of Police (ASPs) and they should be given full training of PSP officers and posted as SHOs in there respective Levies Thanas of Balochistan. It should be the responsibility of the SHO (ASP) to train his entire force in the remote corners of Balochistan so that it should not depend on any other law enforcing agency.

The government should seek cooperation and support from the Pakistan Army for training the Levies Personnel, from ASP SHOs to junior officers, and establish a chain of command. A modern Levies force is a solution to many problems, including busting organized crime and maintenance of public order. The Balochistan Constabulary should be used as a Reserve Force so that Balochistan should not need the services of Frontier Corps or other law enforcing agencies in case of any eventuality. Police should continue to perform their duties in the major population centres, including Quetta, curbing the crime rate and combating lawlessness. The basic fault is that the heavy top police command is non locals and they are unaware about the local culture and traditions thus they are denied people’s cooperation and help for obvious reasons. Contrary to police, the Levies personnel are from the local communities with no outsiders thus they get all the cooperation in crises. We suggested that the police force should also be organized on the same line making it community police than a force of the state to coerce its own people suppresses their legitimate aspirations.

(The write is a veteran Quetta-based journalist with five-decade journalistic experience of covering Balochistan. He is currently the editor-in-chief of Daily Balochistan Express and Daily Azadi (Urdu), Quetta: dailyazadi@gmail.com. To read previous articles by the same writer, click here)