For the past few weeks, it is with consistent and increasing frustration that I write in this space. It appears to me that the weekly scribble is only done to waste newsprint as they are words having no impact. I wonder if others like me, who indulge in this weekly exercise, share this frustration. After reading their columns, I see that their opinions also fall on deaf ears. The National Internal Security Policy (NISP) has been announced. The fact that we now have an internal policy is a good initial step. While reading about the NISP, I did feel a heart tug as this was announced after the deaths of 50,000 Pakistanis, 50,000 and counting if you include this present week. The fact that the ‘bloody civilians’ were allowed to share this policy with parliamentarians (sans the upper house) is also good news. That it showed that reflection and thinking had gone into it is the cherry on the rotten top. Alas, there it ends. This is the end of the good news. A lot has been written about the implementation and whether the mechanisms needed for its implementation are in place or not. I would refrain from sharing my two cents on that aspect. What I am worried about is that the thinking and the thinking-talking heads responsible for this policy have not been able to overcome an important blind spot. Just like the warning on car side view mirrors that read, ‘Objects might be nearer than they appear in the mirror’, I feel that the title page of the NISP must be accompanied with this warning. In fact, let me correct myself: it should read, ‘The dangerous objects are already here’. What is this blind spot? The governmental blind spot that is, as thousands of trees have been destroyed by columnists and academicians to highlight this but to no avail. Hence the frustration that I feel as I write this. This governmental blind spot is: we need some militants as part of our national defence policy. Successive governments, whether civilian, military or quasi-military, have firmly believed that we need non-state actors to intervene and facilitate our military experiments in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In political and military circles, belief in the mujahid (holy warrior), who is a strategic asset and can indulge in guerrilla warfare on a state’s behalf, and who can further strengthen geographically and ideologically the global Muslim ummah (community) is an extremely dangerous proposition. That such adventures are dangerous is no longer a hypothetical statement but a proven fact as Pakistan’s history has shown, except that it is not just Pakistan’s history. The absence of this thinking for the NISP, as well as the recent understanding on dabbling in Syria’s affairs, shows that it is our present and future too. This is a proven lethal formula for us but we still insist on the importance of these non-state actors. It is all very well for the Pakistan army to declare that only states declare a ceasefire and that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), being a non-state actor, cannot declare one. However, for all intents and purposes, it is the military and quasi-military governments’ nurturing of these non-state actors that they are even in a position to confront a state. After all, this is what we trained them to do, except that they did not read the fine print on the memo that the Afghan and Indian states were to be the target, not us — not the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. However, now, our boys decide that Pakistan is not Islamic enough and, thus, Rawalpindi, we have a problem. What is frustrating and foolishly dangerous is that even now our NISP does not consider this factor. Even now, General Hamid Gul has advisory meetings with the army brass in an attempt to differentiate between the still useful militants and the rogue ones. It is only after the rogue ones that the military would like to go. As I write, there are policy level meetings to correctly identify and isolate the strategic assets amongst the rotten lot. Some international media columnists have opined that religious militancy is in the DNA of Pakistanis. I find such statements extremely redundant. If this were true then the governmental project of ‘train a militant’ would not have been initiated. What is imperative is that this training needs to be abandoned now. A few years back, there was this governmental initiative of forming civilian groups known as aman jirgas (peace councils) who were given arms also. At that time, I had pinpointed the folly of (a) arming civilians in an increasingly militarised society such as ours and (b) placing civilians in direct militant fire. Much as I wanted to be proved wrong, the attacks on the peace jirga members and their families for the past three years has shown what a lethal policy this was. The task of security cannot be outsourced, not to peaceful citizens. The task of military adventures, should Pakistan foolishly still want to go that way, also cannot be outsourced to indoctrinated, armed militants. For sooner or later, the chickens come home to roost. Certainly, fellow columnist and lawyer Babar Sattar sums it up best: “This project needs to be extinguished as a matter of principle. Our leadership needs to identify the decision to create and use non-state actors as a policy failure and not their transformation from non-state into anti-state. Thus, we must not attempt reconversion of anti-state actors to pro-state, but focus on the neutralisation of their militant gene and their transformation into peaceful citizens.” A NISP that is cognisant of this blind spot and seeks to address this would truly be a functional one. Otherwise, it is business as usual and we will continue to indulge in our original sin: lethal adventurism at home and abroad. The writer is a development consultant. She tweets at @GulminaBilal and can be reached at coordinator@individualland.com