Pakistani policy makers need to harness both the civilian and military institutions to effectively counter internal militancy and external terrorism, said United States Institute of Peace (USIP) special report titled ‘Charting Pakistan’s Internal Security Policy’ written by policy analyst and journalist Raza Ahmad Rumi.
According to the report, Pakistan’s policy makers need to develop multifaceted strategy that incorporates a national intelligence directorate, an internal security adviser, enhanced jurisdiction of the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), parliamentary participation in counter terrorism, increased financial commitments, education reforms, provincial counter terrorism strategies and altering public narrative. Such measures need to be implemented in letter and spirit with complementary institution reforms.
Background:
The report said that Pakistan’s governance has seen major upheavals and incremental democratization over the past decade. Its civilian space, especially since the anti-Musharraf movement of 2007, has expanded into an ongoing democratic transition.
“Whether this shift is permanent – given the country’s traditional rule by military or quasi-military regimes – remains to be seen,” the report said. At the same time, extreme turbulence in internal security challenges characterises the democratic decade. Terrorism and insurgencies have challenged state capacity and its economy.
It stated that Pakistan’s India-centric strategic view of national security is a major factor that has led to such an impasse. The Pakistani military defines national security as confronting what it terms security dilemmas posed by the country’s hostile relations with India and Afghanistan. “The military contextualises these dilemmas by pointing to geography, historical disputes, an insecure region and ongoing great power geopolitics,” Rumi stated in the report.
Viewing India as a perpetual enemy, Pakistan neglected internal state building and fostered violent groups that fought on behalf of the state against India. Furthermore, thirty years of conflict in the neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas also fuelled militancy, the report said.
Who is in charge of Policy?
The report stated that in Pakistan’s context; civilian control could be interpreted as the absence both of overt military interference in the policy making process and a military coup or the threat of it.
The report further said that civilians can exercise this control by making decisions regarding the country’s defense policies, by setting the political direction of the security policy, inducing strategic and operational priorities and by making decisions on the organisation, deployment and employment of security forces, all while allocating resources and exercising accountability mechanisms. This essentially means that the state’s military security apparatus implements policy rather than sets it.
“Pakistan’s military has directly ruled in the country for more than three decades. This has entrenched the dominance of the military over the political process, policy making, and administrative apparatus of the state. The military considers decisions on the country’s foreign and security policies its exclusive domain,” the report said.
According to the report, the Pakistani polity is divided along multiple political, ethnic, and religious lines, as well as along institutional divisions between civilian and military authorities. The resulting political instability undermines the government’s ability to craft a coherent and effective policy. Elected civilians have not been able to exercise control over security policy due to a weak political system, dysfunctional political parties, lack of political institutions such as parliamentary committees or think tanks and the militarisation of the civilian bureaucracy. This has translated into the absence of capacity among the political elites to take charge and manage policy making. Even if a policy is adopted, the state has to ensure that all political and institutional stakeholders support the policy framework and direct their operations toward implementing it. Building that consensus and sustaining it for the long term in a polity is a herculean task.
Mechanisms that ordinarily regulate political and institutional rivalries are weak and given Pakistan’s turbulent history, unelected institutions prevail over policy direction and outcomes. Any consensus is bound to be short-lived in the face of intense civil-military competition, the report said.
Policy making Architecture:
The report said that in August 2013, shortly after coming to power, the new Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government decided to reframe and rename the Defense Committee of the Cabinet as the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS).
Chaired by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it includes the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, interior and finance, as well as senior military leadership—the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and the chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The CCNS, as a subcommittee of the federal cabinet, is the highest institutional forum where federal ministries, civilian intelligence apparatus and military institutions—including its intelligence outfits—come together under the guidance of political leadership and form policies.
Formulating new policies:
The report said that Pakistan’s first National Internal Security Policy (NISP) was approved by the full cabinet in February 2014, setting out goals to establish and ensure writ of the state within Pakistan’s territorial boundaries, defeat extremism and launch counter-terrorism measures to protect citizens from all internal threats. The NISP was conceived and formulated by the Ministry of Interior and NACTA in December 2013, subsequently reviewed and approved by the CCNS in January and the full cabinet in February 2014.
Later, the government presented the NISP in the national assembly on February 26, 2014, to build political consensus on tackling terrorism.
The NISP is divided into three parts: strategic, operational and secret. The interior minister described the strategic section as the government’s efforts to talk with militants who were willing to engage in a dialogue and conduct targeted military operations against those willing to fight.
Implementation Plan:
According to Rumi’s report, ten months after the NISP’s formulation and a devastating attack on the Peshawar Army Public School in December 2014, an All Parties’ Conference presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced—with the military brass in attendance—an additional twenty-point National Action Plan (NAP) to counter-terrorism and extremism. The NAP essentially rearticulated the goals and objectives of the NISP but offered two additional features: Implementation of the death penalty for convicted terrorists and the establishment of special military courts to fast-track terrorism related trials of “jet black” terrorists.
NACTA’s Role:
The report stated that NACTA’s formal relationship with other ministries and agencies is unclear and impedes its authority given that Pakistan’s bureaucratic apparatus operates under a business framework—institutionalised compartmentalisation—under which each ministry jealously guards its mandate and does not allow overarching agencies to pass instructions. Reporting and sharing information with NACTA as an affiliate of the MOI presents a major challenge for many federal ministries and intelligence agencies that fall outside the MOI’s operational and financial control.
Recommendations:
The report recommended Pakistani policymakers to include the need for an internal national security adviser, jurisdiction over NACTA, provincial counter-terrorism strategies, a national intelligence directorate, parliamentary participation in counter-terrorism operations, financial commitments, consensus on education reform and public narratives against militancy and appoint a national internal security adviser.
Pakistan has its national security adviser, who assists the Cabinet Committee on National Security on national security issues with external and foreign policy implications.
Place NACTA under the prime minister’s secretariat and use the Council of Common Interests as the apex monitoring institution. An empowered federal level counter-terrorism agency with nationwide jurisdiction should not be underplayed, the report recommended.
It also recommended devising provincial strategies to take the counter-terrorism agenda forward. Provinces are autonomous in pursuing their own security-related programs and policies rather than being obliged to follow the direction set by the federal government.
Rumi recommended that Pakistan must assess and establish a workable model for a national intelligence directorate and involve parliament’s national security-related committees in counter-terrorism operations.