Terrorism on the wane thanks to NAP: government

ISLAMABAD: Reacting to the Supreme Court’s observation that ‘the federal and four provincial governments were not serious about the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP), the Ministry of Interior on Saturday said NAP was part of the national agenda and it was not the responsibility of a single department or ministry.
In a statement, the Interior Ministry spokesperson said terrorist activities in the country had decreased to a great extent because of NAP and international organisations had also acknowledged this.
Giving the details of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, he said about 20,000 miscreants had been either killed or injured so far and 2,500 arrested. “About 400 IED fabricators have been arrested and 100 terrorists’ networks busted.”
The official said Operation Zarb-e-Azb had broken the backbone of the terrorists while the crime rate had also been reduced significantly.
The spokesperson said all the federal and provincial departments were closely working on NAP and the Apex Committees were fully monitoring its implementation.
He pointed out that so far 54,376 combing operations had been conducted leading to 60,420 arrests. He said 3,019 intelligence-based operations had also been carried out.
The spokesperson said 97.9 million SIMs had been verified through the biometric system while 5.1 million were blocked.
He said the port city of Karachi had witnessed a 44 percent reduction in target killings, 37 percent in murders, 46 percent in terrorism and 23 percent in thefts due to the Karachi operation. About 56,000 criminals, including 688 terrorists, have been arrested, the spokesperson added.
He pointed out that about 8,111 activists of proscribed organisations had been placed in the Fourth Schedule while cases had been registered against 1,026 people among them.
He said the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and State Bank had either registered cases or frozen Rs2 billion to stop suspicious transactions and to check money laundering.
He said work on various components like the social media, repatriation of Afghan refugees, breaking the financial networks of terrorists, Fata reforms, Madaris registrations was under way; however, there were some internal as well as external obstacles in the way of speedy progress on these issues.
The spokesman added that keeping a check on the activities of NGOs was not part of NAP. He, however, added that the government had taken notice of the NGOs’ activities in the country and was trying to regulate them through a proper regulatory mechanism.
He said the prime minister had recently directed the handing over of NGO affairs from the Economic Affairs Division to the Interior Ministry and given six months to streamline the process.
The spokesperson expressed the hope that within the stipulated period a comprehensive regulatory mechanism would be put in place to regulate the NGOs including regulating their funding.