Recent TTP infiltration in north is concerning, seminar told

Islamabad : Syed Kaleem Imam, former IG Punjab, IG Sindh, and Federal Secretary of the Ministry of Narcotics Control, has said that the resurgence of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan is manifested through several attacks, both individual and on institutions, in the northern belt of Pakistan.

Mr Imam was speaking at a roundtable discussion at the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS)on ‘Recent TTP infiltration in the north of Pakistan; impact and future prospects.’ Mr. Imam said that Pakistan’s threat spectrum mainly consisted of an unstable Afghanistan and a hostile India in its neighbourhood. Internally, Pakistan had been resiliently dealing with terrorism and growing militancy.

He said that the US withdrawal and the takeover of the Taliban of Afghanistan had direly affected the northern belt of Pakistan, i.e., an area that had suffered the worst fate during the previous Taliban regime. He added that Pakistan did have policy frameworks but required robust efforts to ensure sustainable peacekeeping measures including police reforms along with vigorous actions on what orders were imperative.

While there had been several reforms in police, community policing was still a far cry and required the elimination of several challenges, he said adding that extrajudicial measures needed to be discouraged along with support for apolitical policing to strengthen the LEAs were significant in moving forward. Moreover, timely intelligence sharing, especially in the case of former FATA was of grave importance to curb militancy in the troubled areas of Pakistan.

He stressed that police must be represented in counterterrorism policy-making. He was of the view that despite all odds, Pakistan had stood tall in the face of all challenges. The state response in the form of legislation and militancy manoeuvres and most importantly, the reforms within the criminal justice system, were laudable. The introduction of NISP and NSP as a combination of kinetic and non-kinetic measures to combat terrorism was also a significant move on part of a government as suggestively vulnerable as Pakistan, he observed.