No easy solutions

It is nearly impossible to eradicate something that is underpinned by an extremist mindset grown over generations

The creation of the National Action Plan (NAP) may finally bring about the change in the security climate and mindset that the country is so badly in need of — but it will not be happening tomorrow or the next day. Or possibly not this year either. What the NAP did at the outset was list a set of bullet points; the job then was to turn them into an action plan that was to be implemented countrywide. Unsurprisingly, there are wide variations in how that is being done. The enrolling of 6,550 unregistered madrassas in Punjab is a case in point. There is reportedly and again unsurprisingly fierce resistance from the clerics who run them, who have not the slightest inclination to reveal their sources of funding. They in turn have their political and sectarian backers, who are not so inclined either as it may disturb the balance of their vote bank. An unnamed official has said that there are 170 madrassas in Punjab that are directly funded by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain — flying in the face of the preposterous assertion to the Senate by a representative of the Punjab police that that there were no madrassas in the entire province receiving funds from overseas.



As a byproduct of the inquiries into the funding, 10,000 illegal weapons were recovered from more than 9,000 ‘suspected militants’ — both figures which of themselves are cause for alarm. It is also reported that 350 foreigners, predominantly Afghans, were arrested. Although it would be unfair to label all foreigners as a potential problem, the numbers suggest that the registration process for foreigners is far from perfect, and if this is the picture in Punjab, one has to wonder at how many other unregistered foreigners there are spread across the country. The registration of madrassas is going ahead as per the NAP according to the Punjab Home Minister, Colonel (retd) Shuja Khanzada, who also conceded that some madrassas “are funded by brotherly Muslim countries”. Some of those countries may be expecting their money to support an agenda that is far from being in the interests of the state of Pakistan.

Moving on to Sindh, implementation of the NAP in the province appears to be gathering both pace and traction. A counterterrorism force is to be raised, a decision taken at the first apex committee meeting, which also decided to set up three zonal committees to speed up the implementation of the NAP. As ever, there is a danger that a proliferation of committees has the reverse of the desired effect, and it will be for the apex committee to ensure that its offspring are diligent in their tasks. As to the formation of a counterterrorism force, that is to be recruited on a merit basis, the best of the best. If that does indeed happens, then we offer a guarded welcome because this is not the first time in Pakistan that dedicated counterterrorism forces have been proposed, not always with any perceptible movement thereafter. There is something of a sense of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted about the new force, as well as the creation of a counterterrorism unit operating under the DIG. That both of these bodies should have long been in place and were not simply underlines the failure of governance across many years and administrations.

Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah has said that he wants the province to be “purged of terrorism” — a sentiment that nobody is likely to disagree with unless they are terrorists or their sympathisers and support infrastructure. There is no single solution to the eradication of terrorism, and in reality it will be an impossibility to completely stamp out something that is underpinned by an extremist mindset that has grown over generations. It is too early to say whether the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar really does constitute a tipping point. A definite maybe is the best that can be said today.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th,  2015.

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