Pakistan’s National Action Plan to Fight Militancy Is Back on the Table

The resurgence of Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP)-led terrorism in Pakistan has once again brought the country’s National Action Plan (NAP) against militancy into the spotlight.

Developed through a national consensus after the 2014 TTP attack on an army-run public school, the 20-point action plan was crucial in uprooting the TTP’s hideouts in Pakistan and served to contain the militancy to a large extent.

Experts believe that while Pakistan adopted adequate short-term preemptive measures to deal with militant groups like the TTP under the NAP, the country couldn’t use the blueprint in its entirety to formulate a long-term effective proactive policy to keep terrorism and militancy at bay.

“The previous government of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) didn’t give counterterrorism the required political ownership as part of the NAP,” Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told The Diplomat.

“Soon after the Afghan Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the idea of peace talks with the TTP was coined, which further dented the NAP,” he said, stressing that the “NAP was a consensus document, which had clearly ruled out talks with groups opposed to Pakistan’s constitutional framework.”

In another issue, provincial governments in Pakistan have failed to coordinate their counterterrorism efforts over the years. The only national body with a legitimate mandate to play that role is the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA). However, the organization has not been allowed to take off since its inception in 2009. “A basic NAP recommendation was to strengthen NACTA. Eight years later, NACTA remains unable to play its legal role,” Tariq Parvez, who served as NACTA’s first national coordinator, said.

Faran Jeffery, deputy director at the U.K.-based Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism (ITCT) think tank, said it would be unfair to blame the NAP for the return of militancy in Pakistan. “One of the major points of the NAP deals with bringing mosques and seminaries under the supervision of the state. This was resisted by Islamist groups as well as some mainstream political parties, which ultimately left a big hole in the state’s counterterrorism policy,” he said.

Pointing out that the “NAP’s original purpose was to identify and counter the roots of Islamic extremism,” Jeffrey said that “political parties, particularly those with Islamist leanings, still feel that trying to implement some points of the NAP can cost them a lot of political capital, which they are simply unwilling to risk.”

Tahir Khan, a Pakistani journalist who has reported on militancy in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, told The Diplomat that it was an error that policymakers in Islamabad saw the drop in militant attacks over the years as a success, meaning they ignored the NAP’s long-term vision and overlooked signs of the return of militancy.

Khan believes political confrontation in the country is also adding to the problem. “The National Security Council recently decided to go after the TTP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and even in Afghanistan, but Imran Khan and the PTI have not announced support for it,” he said. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the PTI’s political stronghold.

Michael Kugelman, who is the deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center, believes the NAP failed the first time because there was not “enough focus on tackling the ideologies that fuel extremism and terror.”

He said the resurrection of the NAP looks similar to when it was initially implemented nearly a decade ago:“There will be an emphasis on kinetic activities to go after terrorists through arrests and other legal measures, and likely soon through a military offensive.”

An official from Pakistan’s interior ministry said that the idea to engage the TTP was done in “good faith.” “Talking to groups that want to talk is not an antithesis to NAP,” he contended. However, the official said that under the military leadership of the new Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt. Gen. Asim Munir, the “NAP is back in focus and efforts are being made to develop consensus on the issue again.”

However, experts advise that under the renewed focus, Pakistan will have to go further than what has been done before, as simply arresting and killing terrorists will not bring an enduring solution.

Basit argued that Pakistan should move from defense to offensive counterterrorism, address the Pak-Afghan border security issues, and improve institutional cooperation and coordination of different security institutions, particularly of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Counter Terrorism Department.

Khan urged all stakeholders, including the military and political leaders, to speak with one voice, and stressed the need for the media to mobilize public opinion in support of the full implementation of the NAP. “The Afghan Taliban, who are unwilling to act against the TTP should be engaged as they still wield influence over the TTP,” he said.

Khan pointed out that “Pakistan’s statements about military operations inside Afghanistan will prove counterproductive… There is a deep mistrust between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban government and targeting the TTP in Afghanistan will make the situation worse.”

Kugelman believes that to make the NAP more effective this time, Pakistan must “go beyond the counterterrorism elements to focus on the preemption of the emergence of tomorrow’s terrorists.”

“And that entails removing the ideologies that fuel extremism and terror and the platforms and networks that nurture and project these ideologies,” he said.

Jeffery agrees with Kugelman. “Pakistan cannot just keep fighting bullets with bullets.” There is a dire need to “fight bad ideas with good ideas.”

“Without counter-extremism, there is no effective counterterrorism,” Jeffery said.

According to Jeffery, one of the most important items in the counter-extremism domain is “to bring mosques and seminaries under the state’s supervision and shut down those that do not meet the state’s standards.”

“Without this, the NAP will remain toothless,” he added.