While parliament was considering ways the state could formulate a more effective foreign policy and safeguard our national security, the civilian and military leadership of the country held an important complementary meeting to fully implement the National Action Plan domestically. Following on from a government order to all banks to close the accounts of over 2,000 individuals listed on the Fourth Schedule of the Anti-Terrorism Act, it decided to put a stop to the financing of militant groups by making it clear that providing them with funding will no longer be acceptable. As with all such government decisions, its effectiveness will depend entirely on implementation. Militant groups have a lot of different ways of raising funds, part of which is through crimes like kidnapping for ransom and bank robberies. To put a stop to this will obviously require beefed-up law enforcement. Such groups also raise money through donation boxes at mosques. Cracking down on this should be easier if the will exists. The government additionally plans on disarming militant groups, another sentiment that cannot be faulted but which will be even more difficult to achieve since it will require taking constant police action and better intelligence capabilities. To believe that it can manage now what it has not been able to do over the last decade and a half requires great faith in the resolve of the state. To earn that faith, the state will have to begin demonstrating its capability to launch a countrywide disarmament campaign.
Some militant groups have managed to earn some measure of support by forming welfare wings that are often the first at the scene after natural disasters strike. We saw this as long ago as the 2005 earthquake and then each summer during monsoon flooding. The madressahs of such groups essentially act as welfare for children who are given food and lodging. Ideally, it should be the state that provides welfare to all its citizens. The government plans to rid such welfare activities of the militant wings of such groups but acting on this vision may be the hardest since it requires the groups’ cooperation. The government must ensure that it does not allow welfare to be used as an excuse for the continuation of militancy. The final task the government has set itself, of not allowing groups to evade bans simply by changing their names should also be the simplest. Every time a banned group reemerges under a new name, the list of banned groups will have to be updated to include them. Even this should not strictly be necessary since a ban needs to exist on more than just paper and should lead to such groups being disrupted and their leaders put on trial, precluding them from emerging under a new name. If even this is beyond its capabilities then it casts grave doubt on the government’s ability to ever put NAP into action.