The inquiry commission report on the 2014 Army Public School massacre has raised concerns on the poor response by security apparatus against the terrorist attack in which 144 innocent lives were lost.
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the government to make public the report of a one-member judicial commission on the 2014 APS Peshawar carnage. The 525-page report has been authored by Peshawar High Court’s Justice Mohammad Ibrahim Khan. Following extensive proceedings spread over almost 20 months, the presiding officer of the commission had submitted the report to the apex court on July 9.
The report provides an insight into the security lapses and local facilitation to militants that apparently led to the horrific attack. The report noted that terrorism in the country hit a high point in 2013-14. In this backdrop, terrorists from across the border (Afghanistan), infiltrated the school and ‘befooled’ the security apparatus. It observed that the country’s ‘porous’ northwest border sees the flow in and out of Afghan refugees as per the arrangement between both sides allowing unrestrained movement. In this regard, it noted that assistance to the attackers was provided ‘from inhabitants of the locality’ and termed it ‘palpable’ and ‘unforgivable’.
“When one’s own blood and flesh commit treachery and betrayal, the result would always be devastating,” it stated, adding that no agency, no matter how capable or equipped, could effortlessly counter an attack “when infidels are within the inside”. “This act of betrayal diminished and compromised the efforts of our security apparatus and augmented the accomplishment of the enemy’s nefarious plan,” the report said. “No agency, [however] capable and able in terms of manpower, infrastructure and technology could outperform the impact of any attack effortlessly when infidels are within the inside,” it added.
According to the report, on the morning of Dec 16, 2014, the APS premises was left unattended after an MVT (security patrolling team) moved towards the smoke rising from a vehicle set on fire by the terrorists as part of their plan to create a distraction. Using this edge, the militants entered the school from the backside. Although another MVT responded to the attack, it wasn’t able to buy the needed time for the Quick Response Force (QRF) and Rapid Response Force (RRF) to overwhelm the terrorists before they could ’cause the catastrophe’, the report said.
The report said that the generic threat issued by NACTA was for ‘all the academic institutions run by the armed forces’ and had identified that its sole objective was to ‘target the army families as retribution for the unstoppable and successful military operations against the terrorists’ hideouts’.
The report said the ‘fiasco’ is also attributable to ‘the incomparable number of static guards composing the first tier of security apparatus to the level of looming threat’, besides their ‘improper position’, allowing the terrorists entry ‘with no retaliation’. “Equally incomprehensible is the inertia on part of the Askari Guards as well as the deputed Static Guards to the initial heavy firing and blasts by terrorists until the [rapid response forces] had arrived,” it said. “Had they shown a little response and could engage the militants in the very beginning of the attack, the impact of the incident might have been lesser,” the report added.
It, however, praised the efforts of the ‘valiant soldiers’ of one of the patrol vehicles and the armed force’s rapid response which restricted the movement of the militants towards the adjacent toddlers’ block, ‘and thus further devastation in that block was foiled’.
According to the report, the unit regulating MVT-1 has been handed down punishment by a “court of inquiry”. The author of the report said although there was a “clandestine and somewhere failing agreement of views of the aggrieved/complainants (parents of victims) relating to the incident … it is most probably because of the communication gap between them and the military which I believe must have abridged in due course of the proceedings before this commission”.
The report lauded the Pakistan Army both for uprooting terrorism from the country in the wake of the APS attack and for “their unflinching support to the victim families”.
Earlier, a two-judge SC bench headed by Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed heard the case based on a suo motu notice taken on complaints of the parents of the martyred children, who claimed that the real culprits involved in the gruesome incident had not yet been arrested by authorities.
