A house divided

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

The National Action Plan, or NAP, can now read ‘National Action Politics’. The Plan no longer represents the desire of our national institutions to fight the complex network of terrorists and their constant plans to damage the country at various levels. Instead, it has become an instrument of power politics used at convenience to upstage opponents or win legitimacy in the eye of the public.

This sad transformation of one of the most important pieces of policy blueprint into a platform for constant arm wrestling has been in evidence ever since the horrible terror attack in Quetta. The need of the depressing hour requires creating more focus on NAP and figuring out ways and means to somehow get it up and running. However, the urgency since then has degenerated into the worst kind of Machiavellian touché tournament.

For the opposition, split into two distinct interest groups of the PPP and the PTI, the tragedy of Quetta has meant an opportunity to rub the federal government’s nose in the dust. Of course NAP is the instrument of choice in this effort. But for the PPP this does not mean that the end goal is to get NAP functional: it is to secure a better deal out of the government on cases whose investigation is linked to their Queen Bee, Asif Ali Zardari.

If there were one thing that merited real attention in the otherwise needless and ego-driven presser of Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan last Friday, it was his assertion that Dr Asim and Ayyan Ali are the most important matters for the top leadership of the PPP.

That puts the PPP’s criticism of the federal government into perspective. Its driver is not the nagging concern that various elements of the National Action Plan continue to be in a state of limbo, and that the federal government has consistently been unable to get its act together in this count; the real driver behind criticising the government is to maximise the PPP’s bargaining position on those issues that or of core concern to the co-chairperson. If the government can move fast on that track, its lethargy on NAP can become acceptable.

For the PTI, NAP is a concern that is clubbed together with myriad others that it has picked up in its mono-focus attempt to install Imran Khan as the country’s prime minister. It sees NAP’s slow implementation as another disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. There is little or no interest in genuinely keeping track of the government’s responsibilities under NAP, nor is there any urge to see that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is institutionally integrated into NAP’s implementation mechanism.

When heartbreaking events such as those in Quetta take place and the federal government becomes the obvious target of national anger, NAP finds a mention in practically every second statement that comes out of the PTI. Otherwise, it remains a most neglected subject in the party’s narrative against the Sharifs. It is a high value issue only if it can damage the Sharifs politically; but when it does not offer that prospect it is shoved onto the backburner.

For the Sharif government, NAP is that umbrella that is put up outdoors when criticism begins to rain down incessantly. There has been an unfortunate pattern with this government that lends credence to the charge it is either too incompetent or too distracted or disinterested in pushing the NAP cart to meet the speed at which the terror train is moving.

Come a terror strike, the government calls a meeting or two and opens up the dusty records of NAP pretending to be all serious and focused. The more the hype of the terror event the more intense is the pretence to ‘do better this time.’ The charade fades as soon new events come up. NAP is folded up and thrown into the same storage of neglect from where it had been taken out under the duress of circumstances.

Any consistent effort to monitor and register progress on this embodiment of our counterterror strategy should not have had to wait for a whole generation of lawyers to be wiped out in Quetta, or park-goers in Lahore to be killed in the most merciless fashion. The oversight committees and the prime minister taking stock of NAP implementation are not part-time occasional concerns that are hurried onto the PM’s table because terrorists have struck again. These are priority files that have to be always open on the chief executive’s table, inviting him every hour of the day to keep part of his energies reserved for them.

That has not happened. The government, after committing itself to the goals and purposes of NAP and renewing its pledges in the wake of every major act of terror, has been found desperately ill-prepared to show anything for itself. It continues to still use NAP as an image-building exercise, to show that it is ‘doing something’. It keeps expending the political consensus behind NAP in its effort to ward off political challenges and deflect part of the criticism that it has no response to offer in the face of the still flowing blood tide of spectacular terrorism.

For a prime minister who is naturally inclined towards centralising power, PM Sharif has been exceptionally generous in outsourcing all NAP implementation to an interior minister who is not exactly famous for being a team player. This creates a convenient arrangement where PM Sharif can always point a finger towards the interior minister for poor performance, and in crises play the good cop by appearing to do damage limitation through so-called direct action. This may be clever politics, but it is governance strategy at its worst.

No less unfortunate is how NAP has become a ready tool to shift blame and stall debate and critical appraisal of the national effort to blunt various tools of terrorism available in Pakistan. Those who struck in Quetta, or those in Lahore are no different from those who martyred our children in the APS attack or those who attacked our vital installations. And yet now every incident of terror is somehow linked to the non-implementation of NAP.

Post Quetta, the military top brass sat with the prime minister in many long meetings and charted out a course of future action, and yet not even the ink had dried on the notes of those meetings that a press release came out portraying the civilian authorities in dark tones and the army’s achievements in lily white.

Beyond a certain point of acceptability this response is self-serving and counter-productive. While NAP enforcement is crucial in tackling terrorism on the long-term basis, short-term measures and their efficacy has to be assessed on the merit of the performance of all institutions.

The answer to the question of how terrorists were able to carry out such a successful hit is not even partially given by pointing to the gains of Operation Zarb-e-Azb or the slow progress in NAP implementation. The two are not interconnected in the immediate term. If there is a failure it needs to be owned and corrected. Getting angry and resorting to point scoring isn’t the best way forward.

Everyone has to accept the fact that terrorism has long-term presence in our midst. It cannot be tweeted out of sight nor reduced by playing Buzkushi with NAP. Terrorists will strike whether Nawaz Sharif is in or out of power; they will harm us whether Imran Khan wins in Punjab or not; they will remain at work whether Raheel Sharif has retired or has become the field marshal. Putting petty personal agendas atop national interest is a sad statement of twisted priorities.

Counterterrorism is a long vigil. It is an endless battle. Its failures are collective failures – since its achievements belong to everybody. Those who insist otherwise make the job of the terrorists easy. A house divided is a house terrorised.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12