Karachi bleeds again. This time the Ismaili community was targeted. Shock, red alert, arrests, committees, enquiries, more plans, more inaction. After the Army Public School (APS) massacre, with every single party and person in Pakistan agreeing to a complete elimination of terrorism, how come we keep facing attacks on churches and minorities again and again? The fact that it was not a suicide bombing, the fact that it was in broad daylight at the centre of a market place, the fact that it went on for three to four minutes and nobody came to the rescue, the fact that the police station nearby was empty, are all questions that will be debated on talk shows, discussed on social media and then submerged under the next breaking news.
Act or be acted upon. Whether it is economic plans or security plans, the fault lies less with the planning and more with execution. Pakistan’s history is full of it being a pioneer in many planning innovations. The Koreans, in the 1960s, came to study the five-year planning model we developed. We have a separate planning wing, planning department and planning commission. However, despite all this focus on planning, very little has been achieved according to the plans. Each year, annual plans are made and remain as plans. The importance and respect given to plans is minimal. The budget is a plan for the year and is not even a few months old before mini-budgets are made to render the annual plan invalid. Within the budget the most important plan is the public spending development plan (PSDP) that is made and religiously slashed at will. Tax collection targets and plans are also more of a balancing act than any concrete achievement. That is why, when the All Parties Conference (APC) was held and the National Action Plan (NAP) was made the first fear was it being another exercise in pacifying the outrage of the nation.
Unfortunately, the reluctance to act upon steps that need above board and across the board actions comes from vested interests, lobbies and lack of political will. That is why plans remain fancy presentations rather than result-oriented execution. The APC, after the APS incident, outlined 20 areas that need to be acted upon if this menace of terrorism is to be controlled. This exercise was comprehensive and seemed to cover many areas that were considered untouchable previously. Considering action against armed wings of political parties and banning banned organisations operating with other names was also brought under the umbrella of this plan. The million-dollar question was: who will bell the cat? “I will personally supervise the implementation of NAP and will make sure that it is swift and effective,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said during an initial meeting on the plan. Some 15 committees were formed to oversee the execution of these 20 areas and the man of NAP was Chaudhry Nisar, supervising 11 of the 15 committees. Other members assisting him were the same as those who have assisted the PM on every plan, i.e. Ahsan Iqbal, Pervez Rashid, Khawaja Asif and Sartaj Aziz.
The committees also included ministers, senior government officials and top army officials such as the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and that of military operations. However, the military was to focus primarily on anti-terrorist matters and thus army representatives were not featured on the committees tasked to deal with matters such as the persecution of religious minorities, registration of seminaries, sectarianism and media curbs. That, unfortunately, also explains why the only achievement has been terrorists’ arrests and executions, and not much on preventing and uprooting the real pipelines of terrorist breeding.
To carry out a strategy you need a structure. Committees loosely defined and given policy guidelines can never provide a cohesive structure focused on ensuring action. The National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) was supposed to be that structure, an umbrella for all these committees but, instead, what we saw was that NACTA just became a coordination member of the committee just like so many other members. One of the key requirements for empowering NACTA was the setting up of the joint intelligence directorate. The only progress on this supremely important matter in six months is that a proposal has been made, an odd meeting has been held. This is because of the huge trust deficit between the civilian Intelligence Bureau and the military-led ISI that is keeping the authority from becoming an effective and fully operational agency. There was talk of separate budget allocation for NACTA and empowerment to make decisions but it seems that this authority has no authority to do anything other than act as a post office for meetings and some publications.
The most impressive part of NAP is the number of ‘suspects’ arrested for crimes, hate speech and illegal money transfers but do these leads lead to the tracing down of the masterminds behind these attacks? While frequent talks have resulted in better coordination with Afghanistan to prevent cross-border infiltration by groups, no progress has been shared on groups funded by other countries. There have been consistent reports that RAW has been funding groups and political parties to carry out these activities; what action has been taken to deal with this on the military, political and even media level? Blocking financial pipelines is the responsibility of the head of the State Bank. No real progress has happened. Seminaries are still being funded by overseas sponsors. Despite a denial by Chaudhry Nisar that there are seminaries in Punjab receiving funding, the Special Branch of the Punjab police admitted that at least 1,000 seminaries in Punjab were still being funded by overseas sponsors.
Action plans without deadlines on tasks, clear-cut responsibility and reporting on progress are as good as maps without roads and cities. Road maps of any serious action plan require tasks, deadlines, individual responsibility and accountability. For all the 15 areas determined in NAP there should be a list of actions, their specific deadline of completion and the person who will report on them. It is heartening to note that after the Karachi incident weekly meetings are going to be held to monitor progress but then a weekly scoreboard showing actions done or still in process needs to be made to help stakeholders and the public know that the action plan is being acted upon. It is serious inaction in the past that has encouraged repetitive and increasing terrorism and it is serious non-discriminatory action on all fronts in the future that is the only option for the security and safety of the citizens of this country.
The writer is secretary information PTI Punjab, an analyst, and columnist, and can be reached at [email protected]