ery little appears in the Indian media about the health of the Pakistan police. Our attention is overwhelmingly concentrated on the ISI, which, we believe, is controlling our neighbouring country. Prof Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistan police officer, now in Columbia University, tends to agree. He read a paper at the Oxford University Seminar (October 2010) where I spoke on protecting urban centres from terrorism (The Sunday Guardian, 14 November 2010). Abbas highlighted how the ISI was hindering Pakistan police's counter-terrorist work. Foreign assistance was mostly gobbled up by the Pakistan Army. Abbas, a fellow of Asia Society, New York has written extensively on Pakistan's police reforms for Brookings Institute and Harvard's Kennedy School. His latest paper, "Reforming Pakistan's Police and Law Enforcement Infrastructure", which he sent me, was published this month by the US Institute of Peace, a think tank funded by the US Congress. It is a fervent plea to western donors on police reforms for creating a democratic Pakistan, moving away from military related assistance.

Pakistan has 575,000 policemen for its 180 million population, making it a ratio of one policeman for 313 people. The UN standard is 1:400. India lags behind with 1:794. The Centre and the states share security responsibility by spreading the burden evenly. We see this in most modern police systems. In India, the entire burden is on the state police, which has direct responsibility, while the Centre watches from the sidelines. In Pakistan, 19 federal police forces and four provincial police systems perform security and crime duties, besides the Gilgit-Baltistan and "Azad" Jammu-Kashmir police. The federal Interior Ministry controls 12 units, including Maritime Security Agency (coast guards). The highway police is under the Ministry of Communications; the airport police is with the Defence Ministry; and the railway police is with the Railway Ministry. The Centre in Pakistan holds power strings in the placement of PPS officers (equivalent to our IPS), who occupy 80% of senior supervisory levels. It can punish or favour a state by the inter-state transfer of these officers. For police theoreticians, this is an admirable pattern.

Unfortunately, the reality is not so. Abbas tells us why.

More policemen did not result in better policing. Historically, the Pakistan police continued with the colonial tradition of quelling dissent. After 1947 it was to help feudal and tribal elements. It has been a two-way traffic. Politicians needed pliable officers, since the local police could influence elections even now to favour particular politicians in 60% of the country. In 2002, a new Police Act was introduced by the Pervez Musharraf regime to amend the colonial 1861 Act (which we still follow) and 1934 Rules. The new law contained admirable provisions, emulating the Japanese National Safety Commission system "in institutionalizing oversight of the police by public representatives at various levels". It also embodied a mechanism for registering public complaints and on the independence of the prosecution machinery. "However, these adjustments were deemed contrary to the political interests of the legislators (mostly feudal and partisan) aligned with Musharraf at the time, and thus were diluted through amendments." The 2004 law did not carry any of these reforms. We see a similar situation in India where the Supreme Court had to be moved repeatedly by my friend Prakash Singh, the indefatigable police reforms crusader.

On the other hand, Abbas sees a "dysfunctional relationship between police and intelligence organs", affecting police efficiency and their ability to control crime. He quotes noted diplomat turned journalist Khalid Ahmed telling him in 2006 that specific intelligence officers in each district were assigned in the 1990s to "help out" members of the "state supported" militant groups if the local police "created' any problems for them. Even more intriguing is the requirement of prior clearance from the civilian Intelligence Bureau and Military Intelligence by all police systems including the Interior Ministry's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) before asking telephone companies for tracing calls of criminals and terrorists. Abbas quotes Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Musharraf's Interior Minister, saying that "coordination between and among the ISI, IB, police, and the Special Branch of the police is far from satisfactory and that intelligence agencies often have information but do not share it with law enforcement agencies". All this should help us understand better the reasons why Pakistan is unable to control terrorism originating from its soil.