Shameful, to say the least
There is an absence of a meaningful working plan to improve internal security. The Interior Minister can see everything other than the elephant in the room. Recently he denied the presence of the ISIS in the country only to be challenged by Secretary National Security Committee who mentioned the contacts maintained by the terrorist network with TTP and the Afghan Taliban, and maintained that it had the ability to enlist volunteers by exploiting the sectarian divide. Now similar fears have been voiced by Gen John Campbell, US Commander in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a UN team of experts is arriving next week to assess the ISIS threat and to discuss activities of banned outfits which are on a watch list under UN resolution. Early this month Ch Nisar claimed that most religious seminaries had nothing to do with terrorism. The number of seminaries runs in five digits. Thus even a fraction of them is enough to create hundreds of diehard terrorists.
The problem with the PML-N government is that there is little understanding between its leading lights on core issues. Last month Ishaq Dar emphasised the need for finding and eliminating financial resources used by terrorists. He particularly stressed the monitoring of funds gathered by charities and NGOs. A week later Ch Nisar announced that it was difficult to trace fund transactions to seminaries which are included in the category of NGOs. In the two recent meetings held to discuss ways to crack down on the sources of terrorists’ funding, the Prime Minister was briefed by Ch Nisar and his team from the Interior Ministry. Since no official of the Finance Ministry was present in both meetings, it is unlikely that any technical input was availed over the various possible modes of financing and funding that madaris and militant groups use.
What one sees happening is the routine police activity confined to arrests of suspects and random search operations at the behest of the provincial governments. Fresh ideas and comprehensive and integrated plans one expects from the Interior Ministry are nowhere there.
