Daily Times

In response to the Supreme Court’s (SC’s) scathing remarks the other day on the government’s failure to seriously implement the National Action Plan (NAP), a spokesman for the federal interior ministry has issued a statement defending the government’s track record on the issue, citing a stream of statistics to try and prove that progress had been made, albeit there were some internal and external obstacles to speedy implementation of NAP. Further, that work was underway on the issues of monitoring the social media, repatriation of Afghan refugees, terrorist financing, FATA reforms, madaris registration, etc. in other words, contrary to the SC’s harsh characterisation, NAP was not a ‘joke’. And this was stated while expressing extreme respect for the superior judiciary. An implementation report on NAP would be submitted before the SC next week. Even before that, the interior ministry spokesman outlined what the report might say. As a result of NAP, the spokesman said, terrorism has decreased markedly, which has been acknowledged by international organisations. Operation Zarb-e-Azb has broken the back of the terrorists and the crime rate has reduced significantly. Federal and provincial departments are working closely on NAP. The apex committees, which have held 27 meetings so far, are fully monitoring implementation. Combing operations comprising 54,376 actions have yielded 60,420 arrests. Intelligence-based 3,019 operations have been mounted. The miscreants’ toll so far is 20,000 dead or wounded, 2,500 arrested. Improvised explosive devices fabricators’ ranks have been depleted through 400 arrests. About 100 terrorist networks have been busted. Mobile phones verified through the biometric process total 97.9 million, of which 5.1 million have been blocked. As a result of the Karachi operation, target killings are down 44 percent, murders 37 percent, terrorist incidents 46 percent, thefts 23 percent in the city. Criminals arrested so far total 56,000, including 688 terrorists. Cases registered have reached 1,176. Arrests in hate speech cases are 1,799, while hate printed material seizures total 1,512 and 71 shops have been sealed in this regard. Activists of proscribed organisations placed in the Fourth Schedule number 8,111, while cases have been registered against 1,026 people. The FIA and State Bank have either registered cases or frozen Rs two billion in bank accounts to combat money laundering (which is suspected to help fund terrorist organisations). Last but not least, the spokesman said NAP is a national agenda, not any single department or ministry’s responsibility.
Inadvertently, the spokesman’s last comment quoted above hit the nail on the head regarding what, despite the impressive list of actions and their results he trotted out, is missing in the implementation of NAP. All departments and ministries involved in implementing NAP seem to be working almost on their own, with the pre-existing gulf between the military and civilian sides the most serious weakness. The actions and results quoted add up to impressive tactical successes. But what is missing is the strategic cohesiveness under one roof of all these seemingly disparate efforts. NAP was intended to bring all efforts together under the National Counter Terrorism Authority, which remains moribund. A Joint Intelligence Directorate was to be created to coordinate all intelligence agencies’ efforts, civilian and military, but it seems to have sunk without a trace. A centralised data base on all terrorist groups was the logical need and outcome of these preceding steps, but there is no sign of it seeing the light of day. What this boils down to is that NAP may be being implemented on a tactical level by disparate departments and ministries, but the higher direction of the anti-terrorist campaign, involving strategic management, remains conspicuous by its absence. Partly this may be owed to the well known distrust the military’s intelligence arms have for their civilian counterparts. But any such cleavage inherited from the past could only be overcome by the government taking charge of NAP and persuading the military regarding the critical need for both sides, civil and military, working together in close coordination if the objectives of NAP were to be achieved. The real failure of the government is precisely this failure to lead. *