t was pathetic to see Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik thanking on 8 December the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) for maintaining peace during Moharram, thus indicating the helplessness of his security machinery. The tectonic collisions between civil, military and jihadi establishments in the internal security situation in Pakistan have been analysed by many. Yet the December 2011 special report from the US Institute of Peace, "Who Controls Pakistani Security Forces" by Shuja Nawaz (Atlantic Council) offers new insight. An earlier study by Prof Hassan Abbas of Columbia University is extensively quoted. I had analysed the paper by Prof Abbas, a former Pakistani police officer ("Reforming Pakistan Police") in my column, More Pak policemen didn't lead to better policing (The Sunday Guardian, 13 February 2011).

Shuja Nawaz's paper has some lessons for us. First, this is relevant to Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh's electoral ploy (13 December) of freeing minority education from government control. Second, this has to be read with the reported inhuman treatment of 53 children found chained in the basement of Zakariya madrasa in Karachi (13 December). Third, it reminds us that it was a leading Pakistani politician who handed over controls to the Army. Shuja Nawaz confirms what the late Khalid Hasan, Zulfikar Bhutto's confidant during the "Islamic Bomb" era, had told me in 2006 about ISI's domestic charter. Nawaz says, "Pakistan's first civilian martial law administrator, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, gave it a domestic political mandate, displacing the civilian Intelligence Bureau (IB)."

Shuja Nawaz reports that the present civilian government has "outsourced" internal security and external security policy making to the military, thereby losing control and legitimacy. The democratic government is too inexperienced to understand the nuances of policy making. An example is the hurried notification on 26 July 2008, placing the Intelligence Bureau and the ISI under the Interior Ministry, without full scale discussion in the Cabinet or consulting the Defence Ministry. When this notification was received, Gen. Kayani and other top generals were in an army mess for a wedding celebration. They converted that congregation into an Army High Command meeting and asked the PM to rescind the order. A fresh notification was issued, holding the new arrangement in abeyance.

uch clumsy decision-making was seen even with the new National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA), which was to take charge of the National Security Council in limbo. Tariq Parvez, a reputed police officer, was appointed to head the NCTA. However, differences between him and Interior Minister Malik over NCTA's reporting protocol led to Parvez's resignation. The draft charter of NACTA is in cold storage.

The result is that there is no coordinated counter-terrorist (CT) action in the country. 19 civilian agencies involved in internal security mount uncoordinated CT operations along with the state police, while the ISI and Military Intelligence "step on each other's toes" in Balochistan. The MI Directorate also has domestic roles as a "counterweight to the ISI", which has four provincial chiefs. In October 2008, a Joint Resolution was passed in Parliament to fight terror, "which essentially ceded all powers to the Army Chief even though martial law had not been passed in NWFP or FATA". In June 2011, the President signed a new law providing judicial, executive authority and immunity to the military operating in FATA. The paper further says: "The military reserves the right to detain persons until it finds civil authority capable of taking detainees over." Together with Articles 199 and 245 of the Constitution guaranteeing immunity from High Court scrutiny, this gives enormous powers to the

military. As civilian governance is deteriorating, the military is being drawn into new areas of influence like economic policy or poor growth rate since the Army will suffer "if the economic pie shrinks".

Shuja Nawaz's prognosis is good and bad. During the next three-five years, military influence is likely to increase, economy will not quickly improve, while the 2013 elections are unlikely to produce a powerful civilian government.

On the positive side, there is greater public debate on the size and role of the Army. Also, unlike the previous years, Opposition parties have not sought military intervention to settle their political disputes. Finally, the press is bold and the judiciary vibrant.