What Nacta can do

Anti-terror strategies would require consultations from gatekeepers to make them more representative nationally.

South Asia is one of the more volatile regions on the globe characterised by the fact that South Asian countries still do not have any coherent, consistent or effective policies against terrorism. It is essential to now deploy a viable counterterrorism (CT) and counter-extremism (CE) strategy for Pakistan, to protect it from enemies within and without. Thus, it is fortunate that the bill enabling the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) has finally passed both houses of parliament. The bill lays down a board of governors for Nacta, chaired by the prime minister. This body shall have a very influential list of members, such as the chief ministers of all provinces, the minister for law and justice, a senator endorsed by the Senate chairman, an MNA endorsed by the NA speaker, the ministry of interior secretary, the Inter-Services Intelligence DG, the Intelligence Bureau DG, the Military Intelligence DG, the national coordinator, the Federal Investigation Agency DG and the inspectors general of police of all provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. This board shall set the strategic direction of Nacta, which is essential since this finally gives teeth to Nacta. The bill also requires compliance of coordination by all federal and provincial bodies, which makes sense if Nacta is to devise a holistic CT strategy.

Nacta was initially set up in 2009, but was soon embroiled in issues pertaining to its administrative control and mandate. Resource constraints and wrangling over its legal status has caused delays in making it potent. Simultaneously, the requirements for integrating loosely coordinated efforts to combat terrorism grow greater, making it the need of the day for a coherent and well-coordinated CT policy. Nacta needs to immediately start preparing comprehensive national CT/CE strategies and start developing CT/CE action plans to monitor implementation of the same by the government. This is essential to foster inter-agency cooperation in Pakistan, which will tremendously benefit all stakeholders, not to mention that it will bring all law-enforcement agency (LEA) institutions closer together.

Extremism as a philosophy is deeply ingrained and rapidly spreading in large sections of Pakistani society. Representations of extremism in the media, both local and international, are also blurred by the same indistinct categorisation of origin and purpose, which may be affecting strategies and policies towards containment of extremism and radicalisation of certain groups and communities. Constraints in carrying out extensive research on extremism are due to lack of resources and information, whereas even if information is made available, the reliability of the same is questionable. Also, the politics of research may not allow accuracy of information, whereas sources of accurate information may not be available for academic analysis due to security constraints. Subjectivity of opinions is another issue affecting objective analysis, especially since historical data is not available in the majority of areas which need to be investigated and there has to be dependence on subjective analysis and hypothetical conclusions. Nacta now has the capability to bridge all of these gaps, only if the intent is there.

It should be the government’s priority to identify and document reasons for growing extremism within Pakistan and list identified extremist groups through available sources of information. It is the need of the hour to identify vulnerable groups and individuals with tendencies to join extremist factions. These groups will include male and female students of public and private education centres/madrassas, the unemployed youth, juveniles under trial and imprisoned and adults. This should be the thrust of Nacta's CE and CT strategy and if it does things right, an entity like Nacta would be invaluable in eliciting the right responses.

Such a strategy would require extensive consultations from opinion leaders and information gatekeepers throughout the country to make the strategy paper more representative of national consensus about terrorism in Pakistan. This would entail widespread consultations with experts, LEAs, religious scholars, interviews with interred terrorists, civil society, etc. This component would require that Nacta becomes integrated and comfortable in not only the domain of the public sector, but also in the wider sphere of citizens and civil society.

Nacta can be instrumental at not only creating a viable CT strategy but also in raising public awareness on the perils of letting terrorism and radicalisation grow and on ways and means to curb it. It should also undertake efforts to generate realisation of radicalisation issues, religious extremism and terrorism, and secondly, to counter radicalisation and terrorism by creating required responses on ideological, educational, academic, legislative and social fronts. It can also help in creating a constituency for CT and peace among a cross section of Pakistani intelligentsia, media, policymakers and religious scholars.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2013.