EU to enhance Pak fundamental strengths

LAHORE: There are fundamental strengths throughout Pakistan which European Union wants to enhance, people of Pakistan need empowerment in all sectors at all levels and the United States wants to defeat terrorism whereas EU wants to do it in a softer way or through transformation.

These views were expressed by Richard Barrett, former UN counter-radicalization/terrorism (CT) ambassador in an exclusive interview with The News during his visit to the city the other day.

Presently, Barrett is Project Director of EU-funded counter radicalization project, STRIVE which denotes Strengthening Resilience to Violent Extremism.

Barrett was asked what approach he would recommend for tackling the menace of extremism and its main offspring, terrorism, in Pakistan. The former UN CT envoy replied that holistic approach was needed in dealing with the issues confronting the country and more importantly, empowerment in all sectors at all levels of the society was the need of the hour. Elaborating this point, the ambassador said, “holistic approach is required because the situation faced by Pakistan is multi-faceted that has many dimensions and directions.”

“Moreover, here things have gone awry because certain elements including those with extremist tendencies are taking legitimacy which is difficult to challenge. The situation goes alarming when you claim legitimacy from ideology.”

The News asked as to what was the harm in building up political strength on the basis of ideology? Barrett replied, “Things go on the wrong track when one jumps from politics to ideology in such a manner that the man who shouts the loudest gets the maximum support.”

Talking about the methodology that revolved around soft handling and transformative remedy of extremism, the STRIVE Director said, “We are here on this transformation mission and want to concentrate on two key areas in the beginning, one of them being the higher education system for which we are trying to support Pakistan government over a three-year period”.

The other area is the media component that is being looked after by Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in Pakistan and it aims at creating a national code on ethical/responsible journalism with the support of the Federal government as well as the Punjab and KPK governments.

The Director was told that Pakistan’s media was progressing fast toward the goal of responsible, research-based journalism, a fact which was appreciated by the entire EU team that also used this opportunity to advise the media to ‘do more’ for attaining this goal.

At this stage the EU team also agreed with this scribe that we all need to realize that the entire humankind is one civilization and that there is dire need for working in the direction of global peace by removing the misgivings besides addressing the genuine concerns.

When the leadership deficit issue was discussed, Barrett agreed with The News that in our country, the model of governance followed is the ‘one-good-man-on-the-top’ model which the advanced world has abandoned since long. The successful mode of governance is that all sectors should work simultaneously in the direction of collective national strength without waiting for one savior to come and lead us out of all the mess.

And coming to the point of the United States versus terrorism, Barrett said, “The United States’ strategy is a military strategy whereas we are pursuing the same objective in a non-military way.”

On this occasion CRSS Director Imtiaz Gul also expressed his resolve to further the mission in his capacity as leader of the media component of the project STRIVE.
During the visit to the city, the EU team was quickly honoured by the Punjab Chief Minister, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, who spared time out of his heavy schedule and frequent travelling to and from Islamabad to grant audience to the guests at his residence. But the meeting had to be postponed due to CM’s dash to Saudi Arabia along with PM to attend the late Saudi King Shah Abdullah’s last rites.