Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Pakistan - Ch Nisar fighting windmills



His performance as Interior Minister can at best be described as dismal

Like Don Quixote Ch Nisar too seems to have lost his sense of reality. The country is conducting an existential struggle against the terrorists. While the army has mainly completed its task of defeating the enemy in tribal areas, the Interior Ministry has yet to carry out the duties assigned to it. Instead, Ch Nisar has trained his guns on western funded NGOs. A number of these NGOs undertake activities which are highly useful for society besides providing jobs to tens of thousands of people. It is a matter of record that while the madrassas, which also happen to be foreign funded NGOs, have produced the entire TTP leadership and a fair number of its activists, no Western funded NGO has promoted extremist thinking or produced terrorists.
There can be no two opinions vis-a-vis bringing the working of all bodies funded by foreign countries or charities under a uniform law. Initiating a smear campaign against the western funded NGOs, however, is highly regrettable. When Save the Children was told to pack up on June 11, an Interior Ministry official told the media the international aid group was “working against the country”. Ironically, within days the Interior Ministry went back on the stand. The mischief, however, was done.
Ch Nisar needs to concentrate on his duties as Interior Minister. His performance so far can only be described as dismal. Two years back the government decided to set up NACTA as a 24/7 setup where intelligence was to be collected, collated, turned into actionable information and passed on to the relevant departments in real time for swift action and with determined follow-up, but it still remains a dream. In December last year, the government and the opposition parties jointly formulated the National Action Plan. It was decided to set up 15 committees, 11 of them under Ch Nisar, to implement the plan efficiently. Pressurised by religio-political parties, Nisar failed to complete the task assigned to him. He subsequently vented his spleen on the NGOs.

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