Pakistan - Punjab comes first?

A review of the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) to counter terrorism by the Prime Minister’s Office has claimed that the province of Punjab is ahead of the rest of the country in taking anti-terror steps such as cracking down on militants and initiating the debate on how the media should ethically cover banned organisations and terror groups. If correct, this is a development that must be appreciated, but this is hardly the right time or the right situation to dole out congratulations. First of all, the release of this report will rekindle the suspicion people have had all along: the PML-N federal government is just too Punjab-centric. It remains under the stewardship of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s brother, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, a province that is the home base of the incumbent PML-N government. It has often been reported that Punjab houses a large percentage of terrorists, particularly in the south of the province, giving them safe havens from which to carry out attacks in the rest of the country. Given this ‘leeway’, in that the terrorists in Punjab have hardly been touched in the past, could be one of the reasons that Punjab has remained more or less safe from the terror threat being faced by the rest of the country, particularly Karachi, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Because of the presence of a large number of militants in Punjab, it could be argued that it was relatively easy for the law enforcement agencies to arrest many members of terror groups seemingly overnight. On the other hand, it could be because of two other reasons: the authorities knew the whereabouts of these individuals beforehand and knew exactly where to find them (but had not moved against them hitherto), or, the arrests constitute the cast of usual suspects, which means that nothing much is going to change. Whatever the case, this is no time for the government to start patting itself on the back.

The prime minister is the head of the entire country, not just Punjab. He is the leader of all four provinces, of all the citizens, Punjabi or otherwise. Yes, Punjab is important, but only as part of this extensive country. The release should have noted Punjab as a starting point in the action plan, not as an excuse for self-congratulation. This could lead to complacency and that is not what the government can afford at this critical time in our history.