Daily Times

Pakistani state institutions are currently in a flux. They largely lack a prospective vision under the lordship mostly of complaint and conformist bureaucrats or technocrats who are always ready to shift from private to public when in demand.

This is one of the big reasons of the dysfunction that we witness in the public sector education, health and legal justice system. Telling deficits in the overall governance regime – misrule, poor planning, little regard for public-interest management – essentially stem not only from a conformist and mindless pliant bureaucratic attitude but also from the propensity to control to safeguard “national interest”.

This vaguely defined national interest drives much of policy planning these days. One of the issues currently sullying the image of the country is a new registration (with the government) regime accompanied by the compulsory requirement for a No Objection Certificate (NOC). Countless national and dozens of international non-governmental organisations (NGOs/INGOs) seem to bear the brunt of the new regulation.

Dozens of (I)NGOs, including some very prominent ones, have recently been denied the NOC or registration, and asked to wrap up business within 60 days.

These instructions come through the Ministry of Interior. But the ministry places the blame for approval or rejection of NOCs and registration on the military security apparatus.

This has led to the perception that the security establishment has taken upon itself to accept or reject foreign NGOs for operations inside Pakistan.

Ostensibly, this stringent handling of the (I)NGOs reflects the establishment’s paranoia with the human rights-based civil society interventions in health, education and skills development.

Little thought, it seems, goes into the socioeconomic fallout of this policy.

Firstly, closure or suspension directly impacts livelihoods of people associated with NGOs/INGGOs. Chucking (I)NGOs out of business looks like the easiest option for a system that is choking under the burden of its failures.

Secondly, closing down foreign NGOs, which are running educational, skills-enhancing training programmes means denying the youth educational/training opportunities. Is it right to punish workers and deprive youth of capacity building opportunities in the name of national security?

This obviously cuts out employment opportunities and adds to the army of unemployed in conflict-battered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. In Punjab, influential NGOs, close to the governmental wheeler and dealer, seem to have found a way around the new regulations too.

Thirdly, the establishment seems to be totally oblivious to the fact that their disfavor (because of suspicion of espionage) to foreign NGOs in particular and their local implementing partners in general only generates negative story both in and outside Pakistan. It spreads via the word of mouth and this taints an already fledgling image of the country.

Fourth, the current policy arms the lower rung bureaucrats with a blackmailing tool, and has bred corruption within security institutions. You grease the palm of some officials in the home departments, and the bureaucrat there would find you a way out. A question boggling the minds of those concerned is whether it makes sense at all to view and weigh everybody and every institution through the intelligence prism, particularly in a social context that stinks of governance failures and deficient learning/training opportunities?

Choking, suspending or closing out seems to be the only response in a system reeling from massive state sector failures.

This situation begs quick and smart responses instead of reliance on the brute power of the establishment to deny functionality to local and foreign NGOs. Quite strange that the security apparatus grants NOCs and registration to entities such as USAID and GIZ or DFID but denies the same to their local implementing partners (NGOs), which again is a way to cripple the function of donors.

Agreed a lot of mischief has taken place in the cover of welfare/agriculture and rights advocacy since 9/11. But not everybody is a spy. Nor has the state the capacity to grab every single informant or spy. This predatory approach cannot safeguard the national interests. It works only to the contrary; it undermines the national interest and only adds to the negative perceptions on Pakistan. This approach offers no mitigation to the country’s problems rooted in misrule and poor management. It will only further discredit its image, particularly when the security establishment is seen as the driver of the (I)NGO policy.

The writer is Editor, Strategic Affairs

Published in Daily Times, December 9^th 2017.