Pakistan Uses Military Spy Technology to Track Covid-19 Cases

By Ben Farmer ISLAMABAD  

Tracking technology from Pakistan’s feared military spy agency is being used to trace Covid-19 cases as the country tries to switch from a broad lockdown to targeted restrictions allowing more of the economy to resume.  

The system from the military’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) was originally devised to track terrorists and is believed to be based on mobile phone data. Generals last week said that “all army resources are being used at all levels to combat this pandemic” and the military was fully supporting the government.

Assistance includes the use of telecommunications and intelligence, military sources said. One Western official said the military had well developed telecoms spying systems, potentially allowing it to detect when someone moved out of a defined quarantine area.

“The ISI has given us a great system for track and trace,” the prime minister, Imran Khan, said last week. “It was originally used against terrorism, but now it is has come in useful against coronavirus.”

Troops will also be used to man cordons and checkpoints around quarantined virus hotspots if necessary. Army medics have been deployed to aid the Covid-19 response and the military’s five testing laboratories are working with the civilian National Institute of Health to increase testing capacity. Pakistan has so far seen 253 deaths and 11,940 cases in its population of more than 220 million.

While numbers are lower than early projections, there are worries a lack of testing is hiding the true picture, and a significant outbreak in a country with patchy healthcare and a huge population could be devastating. The country is also trying to balance halting the spread of the disease, while limiting the appalling economic fallout of a lockdown in a country where a quarter live in poverty.

Under intense pressure to resume trading and commerce, the government is attempting to switch to a “smart lockdown” which would only restrict the most infectious areas.

“A smart lockdown, and testing, tracing and quarantining will drive our efforts against Covid-19. We will have a targeted lockdown only for virus hotspots and clusters,” said Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar, spokesman for the military’s information wing.

Pakistan’s military is widely considered the most dominant institution in Pakistan and has governed the nation for much of its history. Its military spy agency has a formidable domestic security role, as well as being accused of a history of supporting militants to provide foreign policy muscle in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

The army’s increasing role in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic has led to speculation Mr Khan has been sidelined after appearing to hesitate in the early days of the outbreak.

Mr Khan repeatedly said he was opposed to a lockdown because of the toll it would wreak on the nation’s poor. Individual provinces then moved on their own to impose wide-ranging restrictions and the army was deployed in support of civil powers.