We're Looking to Pakistan for Safety Tips? Seriously?

Let me begin with a simple question. If you were looking for a mathematics tutor for your child, whom would you choose? A teacher whose students consistently achieve excellent results, or one whose own students repeatedly fail examinations?

The answer is obvious.

Now consider another question. If a government genuinely wants to build safer cities, which country should it look to as a benchmark?

One internationally recognized for effective public safety and strong institutional performance, or one that continues to struggle with terrorism, political violence, insurgency, and persistent internal security challenges?

Yet Bangladesh has recently expressed interest in learning from Pakistan's Safe City program. The Home Minister has suggested that Pakistan's experience -- implemented across more than forty cities -- could serve as a useful model for Bangladesh's urban security initiatives.

At first glance, this may appear perfectly reasonable. States routinely cooperate on technology. Artificial intelligence, facial recognition, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), integrated command centres, emergency response systems, and smart surveillance increasingly form part of modern urban governance. No country develops every innovation independently.

Technology transfer, in itself, is not controversial. The more important question is whether technology and outcomes should be treated as equivalent. Installing thousands of surveillance cameras is not the same as creating a safe society. Cameras record crime.

They do not investigate it. They cannot guarantee impartial policing, strengthen prosecutorial independence, reduce political interference, improve judicial integrity, eliminate corruption, or build public trust. Where institutions remain weak, surveillance technology often produces better-quality footage rather than better-quality governance.

This distinction lies at the heart of evidence-based public policy. One must therefore assume that before selecting Pakistan as a reference point, Bangladesh conducted a comprehensive comparative policy assessment evaluating not merely technological infrastructure but measurable policy outcomes.

Because benchmark selection should be driven by evidence, not geopolitical preference. Unfortunately, the available evidence raises difficult questions.

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2025, Pakistan remains among the countries most severely affected by terrorism worldwide. Assessments by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) and the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) indicate that terrorist violence reached its highest levels in several years during 2025.

The United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office continues to maintain travel advisories warning of significant terrorist risks across multiple regions of Pakistan.

This naturally invites an uncomfortable question. Are we studying Safe Cities, or are we overlooking the realities of an unsafe national security environment?

Public policy generally follows a straightforward principle: Best practices are usually drawn from best performers. Countries with strong healthcare outcomes become models for health policy. Countries with successful education systems become models for educational reform.

Countries demonstrating effective policing and low crime rates become reference points for public safety. Why should urban security be any different?

Imagine consulting a nutritionist for advice on healthy living only to discover that the nutritionist is repeatedly hospitalized because of their own unhealthy diet.

One would reasonably begin to question whether the advice works in practice. If Pakistan's Safe City program alone were sufficient to produce effective public security, Pakistan would today rank among the safest countries in South Asia.

It does not. This is because Bangladesh's security challenges are fundamentally institutional rather than technological.

The country needs politically independent policing, professional criminal investigations, prosecutorial autonomy, modern forensic capabilities, effective witness protection, transparent oversight mechanisms, and, above all, public trust in state institutions.

Without these foundations, thousands of additional cameras may simply generate larger archives of surveillance footage while doing little to reduce crime itself.

This raises an equally important comparative question. Why not Singapore? Why not Japan? Why not South Korea? Why not Estonia?

Singapore consistently ranks among the safest urban societies in the world. Japan maintains one of the lowest violent crime rates globally. South Korea has become a leader in smart policing technologies. Estonia has developed internationally respected models balancing digital surveillance with privacy protection, cybersecurity, and democratic data governance.

If Bangladesh is genuinely searching for international best practice, why is Pakistan the preferred benchmark? At this point, the discussion ceases to be merely technical. It becomes political.

Comparative public policy scholars have long recognised that policy transfer is never politically neutral. Governments do not simply import technologies; they also import institutional assumptions, governance philosophies, regulatory models, and strategic relationships.

Technology rarely travels alone. Surveillance architecture is accompanied by particular approaches to policing, civilian oversight, accountability, legal safeguards, and data governance.

Over the past year, Bangladesh-Pakistan relations have expanded well beyond routine diplomatic exchanges. Direct air links have resumed, security cooperation has increased, new memoranda of understanding have been signed, and high-level security dialogues have become more frequent.

Within this broader geo-political context, selecting Pakistan's Safe City model becomes difficult to interpret as a purely technical decision. In international politics, signalling matters.

The country from which a state purchases fighter aircraft, receives police training, adopts surveillance infrastructure, or imports security doctrine communicates broader strategic preferences to both domestic and international audiences.

The more significant question, therefore, is not whether Bangladesh can learn specific technologies from Pakistan. The question is whether Bangladesh is gradually adopting elements of Pakistan's broader philosophy of security governance.

That distinction deserves serious public debate. Because governments are ultimately judged not by the sophistication of their surveillance systems, but by the security, liberty, and trust experienced by their citizens.

Which leads to one final question for policymakers: Is Bangladesh pursuing evidence-based public policy, or geopolitically symbolic public policy?

Dr. Lubna Ferdowsi is an academic and researcher based in England.