Daily Times

The National Action Plan (NAP) was adopted precipitately by the government after constant prodding by the military component of the state. It encapsulated the state’s desire to take on the hydra headed monster of terrorism. The plan that enshrined a long list of measures including counter terrorism, counter radicalisation, counter insurgency and choking off the financial lifeline of terrorism was an ambitious yet implementable set of measures that required the full involvement of the federal as well as provincial governments. The aspects covered in the plan called for a national response including civil society, the clergy, media, army, intelligence apparatus and law enforcement agencies. Aspects like madrassa (seminary) reforms required the religious community’s involvement while the linkage of financial crime with terrorism demanded expert capacity to nab the perpetrators as well as abettors of the crime.

The implementation of the NAP was always going to pose a serious challenge in a soft state that had for too long abdicated good governance due to political expediency and lack of political vision. The asymmetry of will between the state’s political and security organs is the major impediment dogging the smooth implementation of the NAP. The anti-terrorism policies of the state should ideally strike the root cause of all variants of terrorism: urban, religious and ethnically inspired terrorism. The weight of the NAP, however, is tilted more against religious extremism leaving tackling of urban and ethnic terrorism to the stand alone solutions of the military arm of the state. The complementary role of urban and ethnic terrorism in enhancing the virulence of religion-based terrorism has not been properly factored in the NAP. The linkages and complementarities between different strands of terrorism — religious, urban and ethnic — have not been duly emphasized, overlooking commonalities like terrorist funding, the crime economy and unresolved politico-economic grievances.

Before offering some prescriptive remedies it is essential to highlight some structural shortcomings that hamstring the state response while operationalising the NAP. The first and foremost problem is an asymmetry of will between the political and military leaderships. While the military, having finally exorcised the ghosts of its erstwhile strategic follies, is fully focused on the elimination of all variants and forms of terrorism, the political component of the state is dithering and equivocating. The recourse to violence and extremism is a contagious phenomenon that gets viral in states that leave governance vacuums in a lax law implementation milieu as a matter of routine. A state that has a hard time banning graffiti would surely be hard put banning the use of extremist literature in the madrassa curricula.

The lack of political will is evidenced in the way the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) is being treated. An amount of 12 billion was refused to operationalise NACTA while over Rs 32 billion were readily coughed up for a high visibility infrastructural project. In the absence of a central coordinating agency capable of formulating and implementing a counter narrative, our counter terrorism strategy remains hostage to the confusing babble of ambivalent voices constantly threatening to sabotage the national consensus. The madrassa curriculum reforms and the registration process have proceeded at a snail’s pace while the clerics in control of these incubators of extremism are being mollycoddled. The state’s timidity in the face of extremist backlash is evident in the shape of missed targets of madrassa registration as acknowledged by three provincial governments. The lack of government ability to rein in extremist clerics in the heart of Islamabad who openly support Islamic State (IS) is another sign of equivocation that encourages extremism.

Capacity building for the NAP leaves much to be desired. Police throughout the world is the premier counter terrorism agency while here the government is happy to leave the job to Rangers, intelligence and the army. Capacity building of the police and concomitant de-politicisation are the pre-requisites for a sustainable counter terrorism strategy. Here we see no such palpable effort. There is a dire need for a national counter terrorism agency under civilian control to plan and coordinate the national counter terrorism effort. NACTA has lain moribund since its inception abdicating the main counter terrorism role to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI). The joint intelligence council proposed under NACTA has also been missing since the inception of NACTA. Such a cavalier attitude towards anti-terrorism is criminal.

There is a requirement of national urgency to instill political wisdom in our fractious polity and resolve all the political disputes that fuel a feeling of injustice and deprivation whether in Karachi, Balochistan or FATA. NACTA needs to be energised into a premier national counter terrorism agency through proper organisational support. To achieve the above, it should be put directly under the Prime Minister (PM) headed by a seasoned ex-army or police officer. The advantages of having an ex-army officer with counter terrorism experience, who can act as an ideal bridge between the ISI, MI, GHQ and PM Secretariat are too obvious to ignore. Police reforms should be undertaken on an emergency basis with police postings and transfers taken out of the ambit of civilian political bosses in the provinces and put under military command for a period of three years. The National Security Directorate should be properly staffed and resourced having an anti-terrorism cell to monitor and oversee NAP.

A zero tolerance policy for extremist narratives should be adopted along with concomitant curricular reforms in all schools and madrassas. All madrassas should be taken over by the state and a uniform curriculum enforced. No incubators of extremism should be allowed to operate in the garb of religious or secular philanthropy. The state must increase its health and education spending, and take strong measures to sever a link between crime and politics. A national anti-extremism narrative should be aggressively promoted fully utilising the print and electronic media. Promotion of moderate, pluralistic and inclusive ideals should be forced upon the media as their corporate social responsibility.

Finally, unless our foreign policy is recalibrated to support our anti-terrorism endeavours, our entire anti-terrorism voyage in Shakespeare’s words is “bound in shallows and miseries”. Our foreign policy and diplomacy must therefore create propitious conditions where the weeds of extremism and terrorism do not grow. It is a tall order yet is achievable if the country is finally ready to doff the mantle of a soft state.

The writer is a former brigadier and is presently a PhD scholar in Peace and Conflict Studies at NUST. He may be contacted at rwjanj@hotmail.com