Pakistan - To end terrorism - A test of sincerity

The Working Group of anti-terrorism experts has submitted recommendations to the National Action Plan Committee. The final draft will be taken up at a meeting of the Parliamentary leaders to be presided over by the PM today. A Joint Session of the Parliament is being convened to ratify the plan. What the PML-N government would have otherwise taken months to do, it is being required to finish in weeks. Nawaz Sharif has finally broken the taboo by taking note of the havoc being played by the sectarian terrorists. Whether the government swoops down on banned outfits working openly in Punjab under new names would constitute a test of the sincerity of its claims. Such is the terror of these outfits that the police fails to prepare fool proof cases despite some of the accused having been booked for killing sores of people. On Tuesday prosecutors in Punjab could not produce satisfactory evidence against LeJ chief Malik Ishaq leading the provincial review board to end his detention.

For most of the time after coming to power PML-N bigwigs declined to blame TTP by name even when the network owned deadly terrorist acts. The government wasted months in futile talks with the TTP. Ch Nisar still continues to insist that 90 per cent of seminaries are not involved in terrorism. He fails to tell meanwhile what action the government has taken against the remaining 10 per cent which means hundreds if not thousands of madrassas. Media has reported in the past, on the basis of information gathered from intelligence agencies, that some of these have provided boarding and lodging to intending suicide bombers, collected extortion and ransom money for TTP and arranged deals between the militants and their victims.

Policy makers have to realise that as long as madrassas like Islamabad’s Jamia Hafsa continue to impart extremist views, their students encouraged to show support for organisations like Daish and its faculty idealised the terrorists while denigrating the military operation, there can be no end to terrorism in the country despite all the hangings.