The Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal while addressing a CPEC seminar a few months ago had claimed that PML-N government had effectively controlled menace of terrorism and the Pakistan, which was a dubbed as terrorist heaven, has become investment heaven. But contrarily to the government’s assertion of waging an all out war against terrorism the situation on the ground tells a different story. The government once again overlooked the most important organization the National Counterterrorism Authority (NACTA) in its budgetary allocations for the financial year 2018-19.
The budget proposed for NACTA stood at Rs.170 million while it has demanded an additional budget amounting Rs. 1.046 billion for the next year. The employees related expenses in the proposed budget for the authority alone stood at Rs. 109 million. This is not the first time that this organization was given the worst deal in the form of peanuts in the federal budget as the government had allocated a total of Rs. 143 million in the budget of financial year 2017-18, while it had revised its budgetary allocation of Rs. 1.559 million in the fiscal year of2016-17.
The opposition political parties of left of the center and counterterrorism experts have been often criticizing the government for not making this organization fully functional. NACTA is responsible for making policies and strategies to counter terrorism in the country, the lack of formulation and non-implementation of which will certainly further tarnish the image of Pakistan in the international community.
NACTA was formed after the terrorist attack on Army Public School Peshawar in 2014. As a premier security watchdog NACTA is also responsible for implementing the most important points of 20 points National Action Plan (NAP) and delineate counter terrorism policies. In fact the fourth point of NAP about the formation of joint intelligence directorate (JID) which would provide a joint platform for intelligence sharing of all security agencies has been the prime requirement of counterterrorism authority. The meager budgetary allocation will pose hurdle in the establishment of this directorate.
It is the merely lip service of the present ruling civilian leadership to eradicate the scourge of terrorism mad the United States and its western allies believe the Indian narrative that Pakistan is exporting terrorism despite the continued sacrifices of our security forces and civilians in the war against terror. Washington and its European allies the UK, Germany and France cosponsored a resolution in the financial action Task Force, to put back Pakistan on the grey list for its failure to strengthen the counter terrorism and antimony laundering regime in February 2018. Talking to reporters in press briefing after this move, the US State Department Spokesperson Heather Naurewt expressed concern over what she called Pakistan’s deficiencies in the implementation of antimony laundering and counterterrorism laws. She told reporters that the US had been concerned for a long time about the action of Pakistani authorities. “We have therefore decided to place Pakistan on international watch-list.”The US move came four days after the meeting of Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal with the Deputy Secretary of State Jhon Sullivan and lawmakers in the Senate and House of representatives in February.
The PML-N government did not take serious the FATF decision of giving a short leash of three month to Pakistan to put its house in order failing which the country will be back on the grey list in June this year. The Interior minister termed it as political move of the United States to damage Pakistan economically. This was a strange logic as the staunch allies of Pakistan China and Saudi Arabia also voted in support of US resolution at FATF. Keeping NACTA not fully functional by making insufficient financial allocations will send a wrong message to international community.
