National Action Plan (NAP), devised for countering terrorism in the country, should be implemented in all provinces in order to completely eliminate the safe heaven of terrorists. General Amjad Shoaib (Retd), Defense Analyst stated this while speaking at a seminar titled, "The National Action Plan and The Implementation Malaises," organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), here on Monday.
The analyst said that with the presence of Punjabi Taliban in southern Punjab it has become the hotbed for sectarianism but the government of Punjab is reluctant to take action against them. Similarly, Sindh government is creating hurdles in extension of Rangers power in the province, he said, adding that terrorists are continuously moving from one place to another therefore NAP should effectively be implemented in all territories and all provinces.
"Unity of command has to be there to ensure effective co-ordination among intelligence agencies," he said, adding that unfortunately we do not have intelligence co-ordination in the county. He said that there are dozens of agencies and some rivalry and communication hurdles may exist between them so there has to be co-ordinated efforts and management, he said.
Shoaib said that National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), one of the key anti terror body in the county, is still not functional. He said that Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) Reforms was one of the key points of the NAP but no progress has been made over the reforms as well. The committee constituted for FATA reforms does not have direct representation from FATA, he said. "We are yet to introduce police reforms and judicial reforms," he added.
Shoaib said that state sponsored terrorism has been unleashed against Pakistan, with the intension of first, destroying Pakistan economy, secondly maligning the law and enforcement agencies and thirdly creating chaos and fear among general masses. India is hiring our own people from the border area and creating the disturbance in our country, he said, adding that Indian RAW has penetrated in our parliamentarians, media and bureaucracy.
He said that it is failure of Pakistan's diplomacy that India is successfully making the international community believe that Pakistan is epicenter of terrorism. Today we are facing a proxy war in Pakistan. Iftikhar Sherazi, senior journalist, said that the relevant agencies have failed to even implement the first point of NAP properly, which shows its poor implementation. He said national narrative is missing on NAP, adding that currently there are two narratives; one blames army for its past action, the other asks civilian leaderships to take responsibility.
"We cannot win this war without taking common people on board and creating one national narrative," he said. While presenting the finding of his study, Shakeel Ahmad Ramay, Senior Research Associate SDPI, said that terror financing and cyber security are the two areas which need to be addressed properly through NAP. Ramay said, "We don't have the tracking system to maintain check and balance system of charity money. Where does the money come from? We don't have any clue. We have to document the flow of charity money, so that it should not fall in the wrong hands," he said.