Will the National Action Plan suffice?

The use of historical metaphors to describe a tragedy carries immense symbolic significance and impact on a nation’s collective conscience. These metaphors capture the magnitude of a nation’s anger and grief to a mishap. By calling the Peshawar massacre Pakistan’s 9/11, the government rightly reflected the nation’s sorrow and anguish over the Taliban’s savagery. Tragedies like 9/11 are watershed moments, which are bound to change the course of a nation’s history and shake it from its inertia and slumber. However, the government response, which has come out in the form of the 20-point National Action Plan (NAP), does not holistically respond to the enormity of the situation. It is old wine in a new bottle. Rather than offering a full-spectrum response, the NAP takes a reductionist view of the terrorist threat in Pakistan.

The government has conceded maximum counterterrorism powers to the military. The broader political vision which should have driven the military strategy seems to be missing. The NAP is preponderantly dependent on kinetic means (hard approach) of combating terrorism, which is a necessary but not the sufficient condition to deal with the menace of religious extremism and terrorism. The plan puts emphasis on adding more teeth to Pakistan’s current anti-terror laws; creation of military courts for expeditious trials; lifting the moratorium on carrying out the death penalty, etc. It overlooks the structural factors, which create the environment that allows militancy to mushroom. Despite pledges from the leadership to take action against militants of all hues without any distinction, the bails of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi leader Malik Ishaq and the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operational commander, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, are ominous.

If implemented judiciously, this action plan will provide the government with the physical space and latitude against terrorists. But does the government possess the wherewithal and the strategy to exploit the physical space, squeezed from terrorists, to its benefit? The answer is ‘No’. The NAP is silent on counter-radicalisation to stop more people from joining militant groups. Counter-terrorism is not effective without corresponding counter-radicalisation efforts. As per official figures, there are around 6,000 militant detainees on death row in different Pakistani jails and internment centres. The government should pay close attention to the families of these militant detainees. The Taliban will try to recruit male youngsters of these families by exploiting the revenge factor.

According to media reports, the administration of a seminary in district Toba Tek Singh’s Kamalia town expelled two boys after it became public that they were sons of a militant commander and the main accused in the Islamabad Marriot attack. Instead of closing the doors of education on these children, the state and society should help rehabilitate them into the mainstream so that the next generation does not follow the path of their elders. Also, the much talked about phenomenon of creating counter-narratives is also absent from the NAP. Policymakers should have been cognisant of this facet of counter-terrorism. In Pakistan, uncertain and ambiguous narratives on terrorism have reinforced existing societal confusions and polarisations. As a result, successive Pakistani governments have failed to create a public buy-in by putting forth a national counter-narrative against terrorists. Counter-narrative campaigns in and of themselves are neither mere PR exercises of ‘we are good, they are bad’; nor are they counter-propaganda vehicles of ‘they kill, we protect’. It is also not a simple binary of ‘us versus them’. Counter-narratives are created to fight the war of ideas with the aim being to win hearts and minds of the population. They are expression of the state’s political will and clarity to fight extremism and terrorism. Counter-narratives should unequivocally establish the government’s credibility before the public as to why their future is with the state rather than with non-state groups (ethno-nationalist, politically or religiously motivated outfits).They should restore the people’s confidence in the political leadership and its actions.

In the final analysis, instead of developing long-term institutional responses, the NAP has adopted an adhoc approach to counterterrorism. Unless the government addresses militancy and terrorism in totality and in an all-encompassing manner, Pakistan will continue to stumble from one tragedy to another and from one military operation to the next.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 15^th, 2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.