Relaunch of National Action Plan!

EDITORIAL: Everything that was decided about confronting TTP’s (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s) new insurgency at the 41st meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) was fundamentally correct. Yet, it must be pointed out that this realisation has taken an almost unforgivably long time coming. Even then they decided to “re-launch” NAP (National Action Plan) in another 15 days.

Since the Plan was devised almost a decade ago and has already been successfully employed twice, the need to delay its implementation by another few days needs to be explained, even if things are moving in the right direction; as must the reason for retiring it and when that was done.

It’s also been finally put on record that official policy under the previous administration – without naming the party in power at the time – actively repatriated hardened TTP fighters under the garb of confidence-building measures and also freed very dangerous convicted and proved enemies of the state as a goodwill gesture.

Now that the fight will be taken to these terrorists with full force, as was officially decided in the NSC meeting, it is also important to understand that, for a time, the state itself sheltered and fed the people who turned on it before and have turned on it again. It’s too much to ask for accountability for such a grave mistake, but it should at least help make sure that it is never repeated.

The NSC meeting proves that the insurgency has grown big enough once again to warrant intel-based and military operations that nobody wanted to see in the headlines again. And that way the security situation has become one more crisis facing the country.

We already have the constant threat of default and the macroeconomic catastrophe, complete with record inflation, unemployment and poverty, that is sure to follow it. We also have a full-blown political crisis, with all parties so shameless in their naked lust for power and privileges that nobody even pretends to be concerned about the lot of the common man anymore.

And on top of it, now we also have an unprecedented judicial crisis that has every chance of imploding and triggering a profound institutional breakdown.

To top it all we are slowly getting used to TTP’s bombs and bullets going off anytime, anywhere all over again. Since only so much can be done at any one time, it is going to be important to prioritise the response to these crises. No doubt the security of everybody’s life, property and rights comes before everything else.

So all parties, all governments and all institutions must first lend full weight to efforts aimed at restoring calm. Once that is done, or while it is being done, the sooner all stakeholders agree to declaring an economic emergency, the better chance markets will have to stabilise and the more likely it will be to avoid default.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023