Full implementation of NAP still a far cry

Experts say political leaders haven’t done enough for the cause

ISLAMABAD: It has been almost two years since the national leadership adopted the 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism in the wake of the December 2014 attack on schoolchildren in Peshawar.

Yet some experts believe that the country’s political leaders haven’t shown the resolve necessary for the full implementation of the NAP in all its various areas.

“From day one, political parties did not accept the NAP and have been reluctant to implement it in its true spirit,” said defence analyst Brigadier (retd) Farooq Hameed. “The implementation of NAP requires a political will,” he added.

He said the cooperation of political forces was needed to implement the NAP. But the political parties have their own interests and their lack of cooperation throughout the NAP’s execution process has been a main hurdle.

Hameed said the military had been pushing the civilian government to implement the plan. However, according to him, there is limit of exerting pressure on a civilian. “Otherwise, people level allegations that democracy is under threat in the country,” he said.



The Karachi operation should be counted as one of the achievements under the NAP, according to him. However, he said, no concrete attempts have been made to revamp and reform the criminal justice system even when the success rate of the Karachi operation was 65 per cent.

According to him, the NAP also made some headway in curbing hate speech in the country.

Another defence analyst, Brigadier (retd) Said Nazeer laid stress on enhancing scope of the NAP to resolve the issues for which the NAP was basically launched.

He said implementation of death sentences of those convicted in cases of terrorism was implemented in a literal sense through military courts but doing the same through civil courts is taking time as due process of law is necessary for implementing the same.

“It is necessary to implement the death sentences of those convicted in cases of terrorism to create deterrence,” he added.

Nazeer said in the NAP terrorism was linked only to religious extremism while there is a need to enhance its scope to include terrorism done in the name of ethnicity and nationalism.

He said the NAP, focused on registration of religious seminaries but gave no importance to the registration of the NGOs which, he said, were running on foreign funding.

“There has been slow progress on revamping and reforming the criminal justice system,” he observed.

He said the authorities have ignored Punjab in their effort to root out militancy.  “There is a need to focus on Punjab through combing and targeted operations against criminals,” he added. According to him, issue of reforms in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) could not be dealt properly.

“I think the merger of Fata with the K-P may become another flashpoint. Instead of getting input from Maliks of the area, the input of the general public should be taken into consideration,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2016.