A three-member bench of the Supreme Court (SC) hearing the case on Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) has taken the government to task for its failure to seriously implement the National Action Plan (NAP). The honourable judges characterised the NAP as a big joke devised to deceive the masses. The SC asked for a report from the federation and provinces by July 22 on the total number of registered NGOs (which we hope includes madrassas), details of their foreign and domestic funding, audit of their accounts and action taken against them.The Court’s question mark is an apt reflection of growing national sentiment; what is to become of the operation when bombs and bullets in Waziristan need to make way for more intel-intensive operations in urban areas? In this regard, particularly, NAP never got off the ground. Ch Nisar blamed the paralysis, in part, to the lack of integration between various ministries, agencies and departments. And while no single ministry can be blamed, it is still the government’s responsibility to ensure all organs run smoothly, especially in times of war. The government is clearly toothless about confronting the madrassas, which means that the radical narrative will continue spreading, and not much, apparently, can be done to choke off their funding completely.The interior ministry has claimed, for example, that there have been over 60,000 arrests related to the plan since its implementation six months ago. That is a very large number, but is it of any significance? All too often, law-enforcement agencies simply inflate such numbers by rounding up peripheral or even innocent suspects. What of the extremist and militant groups and their leaderships? The interior ministry has not yet released a detailed list of banned organisations in the country and the specific actions taken against each of them. Which are the groups involved, who leads them, where do they operate, what are their subsidiaries and alternate structures, how are they funded and by whom, and to what extent have specific groups been dismantled or disrupted – none of the facts are known. Without such specifics, few outside government and military circles could have the confidence that the country is moving towards the shutting down of the militant and extremist infrastructure.NAP is grossly underfunded, as is Nacta, the counterterrorism authority, and as are the various programmes for building counterterrorism capabilities in the provinces, especially the urban areas. Surely, it is not the responsibility of the federal government alone to fund the entire National Action Plan.
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