The channels for foreign funding of terrorism are the same that are used by the corrupt elite for money laundering
LAHORE: The acts of terrorism in Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Sehwan reinforce a brutal reality that we may have injured this serpent and monster, but not killed it. As long as financial, logistical and medical facilitators motivated by their convoluted ideological brainwashing, or greed for financial benefits, along with corruption within law enforcement and border security are not eliminated, this serpent will continue to haunt the country.
The billions we invest in procuring our defence capabilities are meaningless unless we invest in education and health to improve our human resources, so that these breeding grounds for terrorists to groom are discouraged. When suicide bombers manage to come from across the border and reach our cities, it reflects on poor performance and loopholes within law enforcement, border security management and intelligence agencies. This is a collective failure of all institutions of state tasked to provide security to citizens of Pakistan and elected civilian leadership which has failed to nip the evil through effective implementation of laws and monitoring. Unfortunately, corruption and unchecked greed within state institutions and their conflicts of interest in corporate commercial ventures have become a hurdle to the need for concerted focus on the main purpose for which they were created — namely, security, law enforcement and 24/7 monitoring.
The channels for foreign funding of terrorism are the same that are used by the corrupt elite for money laundering and we cannot eliminate the former unless all loopholes are plugged. If hospitals are providing medical services to terrorists in violation of existing laws mandating them to inform the police, they should be given exemplary punishments irrespective of their political clout. When an elected executive is hesitant to take action against terrorism, they lose their constitutional right to rule because they stand accused of violating their oath. Similarly, if the state-funded security apparatus is guilty of patronising private militias, they exceed their constitutional mandate.
Pakistan’s national security and sovereignty must precede any other delirious agenda motivated by our strategic location because internal security threatens our economic viability. The ill-founded adventurism pursuits for myopic gains of individual juntas pursued by Ziaul Haq and General (retd) Musharraf today haunt this country and pose the biggest threat to our national security. Nobody holding public office should have conflicts of interest.
Malik Tariq Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, February 19th, 2017.
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