Counterterrorism: Focus on a workable plan, says Mushahid

ISLAMABAD:

The head of the Senate Defence Committee on Saturday advised the government to avoid bureaucratic buzzwords and focus instead on a workable and effective counterterrorism plan.

“I feel we should avoid such bureaucratic buzz-words as five tiers of a proposed National Security Policy (NSP) or 3Ds of the previous government,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, commenting on the proposed policy.

The draft of the proposed national security policy was made public through media. It claimed that unlike the PPP government 3D-approach of dialogue, deterrence and development, the new draft contained five tiers of national security emphasising “to dismantle, to contain, to prevent, to educate and to reintegrate.”

While talking to The Express Tribune, Mushahid said Pakistan lacked an actual counterterror policy and had so far relied on ad hoc, reactive, moment-to-moment, incident-to-incident based approaches.

He said Pakistan’s current policy could best be summed as the 3Cs: condemnation, compensation and cribbing, either against your own agencies or “the proverbial foreign hand which is never identified”. “Whenever there is terrorism, this is all that the government can come up with – words which are never followed by deeds,” he commented.

The senator said the issue of national security policy, demanded a long term, multi-faceted approach. But, he added, Pakistan’s immediate requirement is an anti-terror strategy to urgently ensure safety and security of its citizens and installations.  “We have miserably failed to defend our people since the initiative lies with the other side, not the state, which has an ad hoc approach.”

He suggested that three things should be given top priority for a doable counter-terrorism strategy: “an effective and autonomous lead organisation like NACTA or Anti-Terror Task Force to work under the prime minister, a team led by a top-notch professional and coordination among army, religious forces, federal and provincial governments, intelligence agencies, police and law enforcement bodies,” Mushahid added.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2013.