Regulating guns

Despite stereotypical perceptions Pakistan is not a country that has embraced gun culture with any sort of homogeneity. Large parts of the country are mostly deweaponised and even in places where there is a cultural tilt towards owning and displaying weapons they are quietly disappearing. It is those parts of the country that are engaged in varying degrees of conflict where gun control and registration present significant difficulties to the administration. Thus there must be a cautious welcome to the signing of a MoU between NADRA and the Balochistan government in an attempt to address the flow of illegal and unregistered arms in the province.

The welcome is cautious because there is a world of difference between the signing of a MoU which at the bottom line is only a statement of intent, and delivering an effective intervention. That said the signing of a MoU is an achievement in itself and has come about because of the efforts of Minister of Interior Ahsan Iqbal and the home minister of Balochistan. The move appears to have cross-party support.

It is hoped to replicate the success achieved in Punjab and Sindh and that in Balochistan 0.3 million manually issued licences will be converted to digital at 34 NADRA offices across the province. Manual licences can be validated and then converted. There will be those that cooperate with the drive to regulate and those that do not, especially those that are engaged in illegal criminal or terrorist activities. The fragile national security system will benefit the fewer guns are in circulation, but there are wealthy smugglers that do the needful and the VIP culture, real or imagined, does nothing to curb the curse of illegal weaponry. For the MoU to transform into affirmative action — and setting up a registration point in a NADRA office is essentially passive — the administration has to have a firm grip on policing and intelligence — but we wish the initiative well, it deserves success.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2017.

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