Unlike the well armed (and possibly foreign supplied) talib, bechari police forces have limited resources, but still manage to not flee from their jobs. It’s a shame that pakistan is letting them down.
Taliban Destroys a Key Bridge in Pakistan - washingtonpost.com
Capt. Tariq Hayat Khan, the top political administrator for Khyber Agency, the tribal area closest to Peshawar, said the unrest has been costly for residents and security forces in his area. Government forces are charged with providing security for 750,000 residents, covering a mountainous area that spans about 1,429 square miles. Khan said the 2,000 tribal agency troops he is in charge of are up against an estimated 20,000 insurgents who have streamed into the area in recent months.
“The strongest point about the Taliban has been their mobility and their firepower. Man for man, we have not been able to match them,” Khan said.** “The militants have in every vehicle light machine guns. They have rocket launchers and more than enough ammunition to boot. My tribal levy forces cannot stand up to that.”**
The increase in fighting in the northwest has taken a heavy toll on police in Peshawar and the North-West Frontier Province as a whole. **Malik Naveed Khan, the provincial police chief, said there are about 1,000 working police officers in Peshawar and 48,000 for the entire province. Overworked and underpaid at about $100 a month, officers are experiencing more casualties than ever before, and their morale has never been lower. Seventy-two police officers were killed in suicide bombings and clashes with insurgents in 2007 in the northwest. The number of police casualties nearly doubled in 2008 with 148 killed in action and about 500 injured.
“My men are fighting these terrorists without bulletproof jackets,” the police chief said. “And hats off to them. They’re standing on the road checking people, knowing any minute they can be hit by a suicide bomber or miscreant who has no respect for life, who thinks that if they do this they’ll go to heaven.”**
Pakistani officials have had to get creative when it comes to outfitting their security forces. Both the police chief and the Khyber political administrator said equipment shortages have forced them to buy black market supplies at Karkhano in recent months. This year, Khan, the police chief, bought 500 to 600 pairs of U.S. military boots at $30 a piece for his officers, while Khyber security officers have been kitted out with magazines of ammunition bought on the cheap at the market.
“I don’t know where it all comes from,” said Khan, the Khyber political administrator. “But I know that when I need something or I’m short on ammunition, that’s where I send my men to buy it.”