Will new body on NAP suffer NACTA’s fate?

Defence analyst says all stakeholders need to come on to the same page

ISLAMABAD: The government’s new supra body to monitor progress on National Action Programme (NAP) may face the same fate as Nacta which has remained toothless and inactive for the past 19 months, an analyst says.

After the suicide blast in Quetta last week that killed at least 75 people, the federal government on August 11 announced that it was setting up a high-powered task force to monitor progress on the National Action Plan (Nap) against terrorism.

The government was supposed to activate the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) and make it fully functional under point four of NAP, which was formulated after the December 16, 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. However, the authority’s board of governors has not been able to hold a meeting till date despite being constitutionally required to meet at least once every quarter.



Nacta was first formed in 2009. It was revived in 2013 and tasked with coordinating counter-terror information. The body was also responsible for looking into the affairs of Nap, its implementation and to formulate policies on counter terrorism.

In March this year, a summary was sent to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for convening the body’s first BoG meeting. However, the fate of that summary and the meeting remains unknown and sources in Nacta tell The Express Tribune that there is little chance it will be convened in near future.

Apart from operational issues, Nacta has been starved of funds since its revival.

The federal government had failed to allocate any funds for the counterterrorism body during the 2015-16 budget. However, the government later in November 2015 released Rs1.06 billion for it. In the 2016-17 budget, the government allocated Rs109.42 million for Nacta – a far cry from the Rs1.8 billion demanded by body.

Now, the finance ministry releases funds for the body when requested instead of a formal system.

Defence analyst Brigadier (retired) Said Nazeer Mohmand told The Express Tribune that there appears to be lack of coordination and a lack of will to implement Nap.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2016.