In an important step towards stamping out terrorism, the Federal Cabinet has approved amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, enhancing the minimum as well as maximum punishment for those found to have financed terrorism, also making it a non-bailable offence.
Whereas previously Section 11(N) of the Act carried a punishment of four months to five years, as per the proposed amendments, any individual or entity involved in financing terrorism shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term of four to ten years.
Giving details of the Cabinet decision to reporters after the meeting on Saturday, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said that all societies and other institutions which have the potential to act as a conduit for such financing shall be required to establish bank accounts and maintain information about their employees, clients, etc. Those who fail to comply will face fine and revocation of licence.
Ostensibly, the decision has been made in line with a UN Security Council resolution, which was passed as far back as 1997.
Since the government waited all this while to take the necessary action, it is likely to create the impression that it is now acting under Western pressure.
However, the truth of the matter is that Pakistan itself is a victim of terrorism.
The menace surfaced back in the late 1970s when the US decided to give a bloody nose to its then arch rival, the erstwhile Soviet Union, through a proxy war in Afghanistan.
It gathered religious zealots from various parts of the Muslim world, in particular Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to fight alongside disparate groups of Afghans against the 'infidel' Soviet troops.
Pakistan, due to geographical proximity and also national interest, as perceived at that time, was compelled into co-operation and to provide training bases for these Jihadis while the Americans trained, armed, and along-with the Saudis financed these holy warriors whom it approvingly, even lovingly, called 'Mujahideen'.
When the war ended in Soviet retreat a decade later, the Americans walked away leaving Pakistan with a mess of at least three million Afghan refugees, drug and Kalashnikov culture, and hordes of Jihadis who knew nothing better to do than to fight foreign infidels treading into Muslim lands in pursuit of their 'unholy' objectives.
All the actors behind the Afghan 'Jihad' - the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - eventually were to pay back for it in the form of bloody violence of one or the other kind.
An unsavoury by-product of that American expedition was the proliferation of drugs and arms and also the establishment of a large number of madrassahs all over Pakistan, most of which promoted militancy and sectarian intolerance.
Flourishing on foreign funding, they were to lead to an implosion of sectarian violence that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent people.
Ultimately, the entire society suffered as it faced a general breakdown of law and order, and, consequently hampering domestic as well as foreign investment. A whole new crop of Jihadis came into its own, ready to export its retrogressive version of Islamic revolution to all sorts of countries, including China's Muslim majority province of Xinjiang as well as the newly-independent Central Asian states.
There came a point when Pakistan found itself on the verge of being declared a state sponsoring terrorism.
Yet either out of fear of backlash or, in certain cases, due to considerations of expediency, the government did not do much to put an end to this monstrous force of destabilisation.
Even when it undertook to comply with the 1997 UN anti-terrorism resolution, it was perceived to have implemented the required measures only half-heartedly.
Consequently, not only the country earned a bad name abroad, this society as a whole paid a high price in terms of its peace and security.
It is about time the government not only strengthened the existing anti-terrorism law but also implemented it effectively.
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