Pakistan’s troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has set up Joint Crisis Management Units (JCMU) to protect politicians, after a spate of terror attacks killed nearly 150 people including 2 top political leaders ahead of the general elections in the country, a media report said today.
The National Counter Terrorism Authority has warned that some top politicians, including Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan, can be attacked by terrorists during the campaign for the general elections, scheduled for July 25.
The decision to set up JCMUs was taken on Saturday during a security coordination meeting here following a wave of deadly terror attacks targeting election rallies in Pakistan.
“The JCMUs established at districts levels will serve as nerve centres for collecting intelligence reports, ensure security arrangements before and after election campaigns and at the same time generate coordinated response in case of any untoward incident,” The Express Tribune said, citing a communique between the home ministry and police department.
The communique read that not only the units at district levels, but sub-command posts of these units should be established at different parts of district in order to reduce the response time in case of emergency, the paper said.
“JCMU must have representatives from local armed forces’ formation, police, levy, civil administration besides relief department [health, Rescue 1122],” it said, adding that all representatives must hold coordination meeting immediately and review the situation regularly.
The communique also read that politicians should be served security advisory before holding their corner meetings and that the advisory should be served on the politicians (under threat) in person besides the compliance thereof should be ensured, the paper said.
The JCMU representatives have been told that it should be ensured that all politicians nominate one representative for security aspect of election campaign adding that such representatives should be in close liaison with local police, civil administration throughout the campaign coordinating security of the candidate and place of political gatherings.
It said that besides local police and other law enforcing agencies, politicians should also employee local representatives of their own political party to improve the security for entry and exit points of the political gathering, the paper said.
It stated that security of the candidates and leaders under threat should be enhanced immediately including involving the politicians’ private guards allowing them with permit of carrying weapons of prohibited bores.
Contact should be established with all prayer leaders and management of religious seminaries for keeping record of the visitors, it said, adding that the civil administration should remain in close coordination with such institutions to monitor the situation in order to deny any space to the militants.
