Abstrict

The 2014s APS incident shook the entire state apparatus, which caused all the stakeholders to sit and join hands to effectively deal with terrorism. The ultimate outcome was the formulation of the National Action Plan (NAP), which provided for a twenty points comprehensive plan to uproot terrorism. The plan was the reflection of Government resilience to show zero tolerance for terrorist networks. However, after the passage of almost seven years, it is high time to look into where the NAP missed its stated goals. This paper looks deeply into those factors and causes and, in the end, makes recommendations as to how to improve things. What it concludes is that the real stakeholders, the street-level bureaucrats, have not been included in the consultation process. They are the ones whose opinions must have been listened to as they are much closer to the issue at hand. Data was collected through secondary sources, including books, newspaper articles, and research papers to make a balanced analysis.

Keywords

National Action Plan, Terrorism, Army Public School, Al-Qaeda, TTP

Introduction

Terrorism is a pre-planned activity that is aimed to generate fear among the common masses through brutality3 and ferocity. These brutalities may be directed toward political people, religious and also toward ethnic groups aimed to produce ideological and psychological effects (Khan, 2019). In the modern history of terrorism, non-state actors are using terror-generating means in order to shake the existing power structure and legality of states. Terrorism is a fight that is done for victimizing the mentality of people, both innocents, and enemies. In the last few centuries, the evidence shows that this curse not only leads to psychological damages but also to great physical losses in terms of lives and money, just like the 9/11 incident motivated a universal scale martial movement, "War against Terrorism," which caused both losses of persons and wealth resources across the sphere.

There are four waves existing in history that gave way to the rise of terrorism. The wave first belongs to the end of the nineteenth century, which was the period of deep-seated international activities. A Russian group is known as "the people of will" sought to activate masses for the changing of tyrannical and biased government (Ahsan, 2019). This group had assassinated vital leaders. This movement is also famous for anarchists led by socialist collections whose aim was to bring revolution and install a government of their own wishes. This wave of terrorism is also denoted as the "Golden age of assassination” because numerous vital armed officers, political leaders, and diplomats were murdered to accomplish social and political goals.

Anti-colonial movements are famous for the second wave of terrorism in the early twentieth century. The groups operating in this era were of struggled to gain independence from their masters in any way, including the way of terrorism. This era of terrorism is exceptional because the terrorist groups were backed by political and social campaigners who were struggling for separate states (Khan, 2019).

The third wave belongs to the cold war, which occurred in the middle of the 20th century between two dominant classes, capitalist and communist, which was an ideological battle. This battle led terrorism to an international level. Different terrorist groups were established belonging both to communists and capitalists whose only purpose was to enhance their influence at the global level.

The wave that emerged in the late twentieth century is called the fourth wave of terrorism. This wave is considered more dangerous because of the religious factor involved in it. This wave has affected more areas of the world and caused their disorder and disturbance. For this type of terrorism, several people of the same religion gather for the promotion of their religious values and thoughts (Ahsan September 2019). 

Pakistan has faced the movement of terrorism for about two decades, for which the land has tolerated a high price together in economic and human terms. 70,000 people have been sacrificed by Pakistan in these terrorist attacks, and economic loss is about $130 billion. Pakistan has experienced terrorism in every shape, in the shape of bombing on target places, suicide attacks on public places, and ethnic conflicts in Karachi and Baluchistan. 

Pakistan has lifted a high cost for intervention in the Afghan War in December 1979. After the bettering of the condition in the 1990s, again, Pakistan directed a very bad policy toward War on Terror conducted by America after 9/11attact on the twin towers. Musharraf's incursion in the war gave way for the creation and rising of militant groups in Pakistan, especially in the FATA area (Saeed, 2018). 

The situation of Pakistan in the neighbor of India and Afghanistan will not lead him to be in a peaceful condition. The entering of Afghan insurgents through borders and the support of the Baluchistan rebel army by RAW has encroached on Pakistan's sovereignty for a long time. The failure of the state to proclaim control on its own land led to the creation of several ethnic and religious groups backed by inside and outdoor performers. Sectarian conflicts (between Sunni and Shiite) are boosted by Saudi Arabia and Iran. Some ethnic conflicts in Karachi and Baluchistan are furthered by the Indian intelligence agency RAW.  (Nawaz, 2016). 

Pakistan was challenged by terrorism when the blood was shed on the streets of the cities where the government institutions were located. As there was a higher population ratio in the cities, the attacks were primarily intended to affect the larger amount of common folks by diffusion terror and nervousness throughout them. The major objective of militant violence was to cause maximum causalities (Saeed, 2018). 

 Asia report in "Revisiting counter-terrorism Strategies in Pakistan" states that the invasion of the military-run school on 16 December 2014 in KP capital, which caused more than 300 loss of children, was a turning point. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) accepted responsibility for this attack. A week later, PML-N launched a new counter-terrorism strategy called National Action Plan. COAS at that time, Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to eliminate all terrorist groups without any discrimination.  

NAP, a militarized method to counter-terrorism, ignores a special resource: police departments who are in continuous connection with towns, countryside, and neighborhoods. With excellent local intelligence, many police officers are aware of existing violent radicals and their links with other factions in their own areas. Thus, lack of possessions and authority and political interference and pressure lead the Police toward corruption than serving communities.

Funding was energetic for the extension of terrorist activities. In the absence of proper implementation methods, terrorist and terrorist groups could collect capital from different bases. Considering the steps taken by FATF to place Pakistan on a gray list, there are some significant measures taken by Pakistan under NAP. Pakistan has created National Task Force in order to keep a check and dismantle the terror financing, proper regulation of internet banking, creation of Countering Financing of Terrorism (CFT) units in all provincial departments and the ban of Hawala/Hundi system (Khan, 2019). 

NAP aims to assimilate the safety efforts of central and local governments by connecting all the participants, ruining terrorist connections, and guaranteeing deterrence by using all existing competencies and possessions of security organizations to defeat inner threats to national security. It is stated that maximum of NAP ideas are about to implement current laws and constitutional bans in order to stop militant organizations from operating or rearranging under new names, prevention of terrorist financing, ruin terrorist connecting networks, take action against sectarian groups, ban personal militias, and curbing hate speeches and literatures. (Ramay, 2016).

What Went Wrong with NAP

The top-Down approach of policy implementation is an autocratic and dictatorial form of implementation. In this approach, the upper ranks choose the goals and make policies for the attainments of those concerning goals. The only duty of the local people is to complete the task, and the upper ranks desired goals. In the Top-Down approach, the local people (the true target) and the street-level bureaucrats are kept being skipped and create the gap between the center and the local people who are to be affected. The same process is done with the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) in Pakistan, which is imposed by higher authority over the local people to achieve the proposed objectives. In the formation of NAP, local people, and street-level bureaucrats, especially police officers, were bypassed, and no attention was given to them. No room was given to them to the ideation and brainstorming process so as to achieve a more harmonized and inclusive administrative system. They were allowed no choice in the execution process with respect to the home-grown circumstances. In implementing NAP, only the perceptions and ideas of center and high-ranking officials (especially army) were considered and allowed them to identify its most targeted and appropriate goals. Top-Down is a traditional approach driven by the state and not necessarily subject to public scrutiny. This approach is a power-play between higher-level/state-centric political and economic actors and authorities determining counter-terrorism policies while skipping local community (Spalek 2013). 

Being a democratic state, Pakistan needs to implement its public policy through a Bottom-Up approach in which local people and street-level bureaucrats are involved. It is a Bottom-Up approach through which the creators start their execution policy construction with the target groups and service releasers because they find that the target groups are the real implementers of policy. Because it is local people who were aware of the factors which give rise to the extremism like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of sense of community and political mistrust etc.   Community bases approach (bottom-up) to counter-terrorism is that which give emphasis on community participation, in which partnerships and rendezvous between communities and state agencies are influenced by the concerns and knowledge of those societies. Involving societies to counter-terrorism also help in tackling other problems like unemployment and anti-social behaviors. Formal responsibility for policy execution and service delivery are increasingly being shared among the agencies of state and civic groups in the form of company work. Here in this approach, the policy is under surveillance and scrutiny of media, politicians, NGOs, and the general public (Spalek 2013).

Defects Faced by NAP

As a result of implementing NAP through a Top-Down style, we can see a lot of pitfalls, ineffectiveness, and defects faced by these implementers. Following are the main defects in NAP. 

Skipping of Local Representatives:

The Global terrorism report of 2015 states that states with bad governance, fragile security system, systematic crimes, political instability, and economic inequalities are experiencing a high rate of arms conflicts. These all are the triggers of radicalization of societies and to attract, motivate and mobilize young masses. This report shows that all roots of terrorism lie in the community so the concerned community should be involved in the policies formulated for countering terrorism. Thus, it is a bottom-up approach that take the community into confidence. But unfortunately, here in NAP top-down approach was applied in which the local representative of people like MNAs and MPAs has been bypassed and ignored, and the center level authorities were given full power to formulate policies that were not aware of local problems. To deter terrorism effectively, a tool is known as the "Early Warning and Early Response" (EWER) system should be applied, which is itself a bottom-up approach. In this system the women and youth who are local expertise can better notice the indicators of possible conflict and violence. The idea of the EWER system rests on the hypothesis that home-grown masses who live in the violence-prone zones have well contact to the best and more dependable evidence and understanding of the dynamics of violence and conflict (Subedi 2017). Here the main failure faced by NAP is due to its implemented mechanism through a top-down approach which is highly authoritative and non-democratic.




NAP as a Hurdle to Democracy

When the attack happened on 16 December 2014 at Army Public School in Peshawar, one year later, the NAP that was initiated in reaction to this tragedy has enabled the army to assert itself at the expense of the government. The military, which for years is in the struggle to be included in the structure of Policymaking since the character it had played in the defense and inside Policymaking, has largely achieved in 2015 and 2016 without meeting any strong opposition. As evident from the history of Pakistan narrated in different books, many army officers have considered this question "How to rule and shield one's welfares without directly governing". For this purpose, National Security Council (NSC) was created by Yahya khan, which was envisioned to maintain the role of the military in policymaking structure. This was unpleasant for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and this led him to establish a Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) under the Prime Minister. But NSC was again encouraged by Zia, who included President, PM, Senate Chairman, the Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff Committee, the chief of staff of the army, Air Force, and Navy as well as four Chief Ministers. When democratization happened again in 1988, COASs often tried to undermine Prime Ministers (Benazir Bhutto & Nawaz Sharif) who were not ready to follow their undemocratic commands. In 1998, COAS Jahangir Karamat suggested that instead of this trench warfare, the civilian should recognize the army's role in policies formulations. He claimed in his famous speech that NSC would confirm and legitimize the role of the military in the policymaking process. For this idea, then PM Nawaz Sharif took the exceptional step and compelled Karamat to take resign before his own retirement age. Later on, when Musharraf took the coup from Nawaz, he revised the scheme of Karamat. In 2004, a new NSC was created. After 2008, the PPP government rejected again NSC and established DCC (c. Jaffrelot 2016). 

After the victory in the 2013 election, Nawaz Sharif dumped this policy and added military to the policy-making circle for the first time in a democratic government. The NSC was reconstructed in August 2013. After the attack on Army Public School, greater tasks were given to the army under the umbrella of NAP which was constructed by the joint efforts of the army and the government. The constitution was amended to legalize the military court. Apex Committees were created in every province whose aim was to bring together civilians (Politicians and Bureaucrats) and the army under the chairmanship of Chief Ministers and Prime Minister. But the strongmen of these committees were those of uniform who had given their security-oriented agenda, the Corps Commander at the provincial level and COAS at Centre. The meetings of the Apex committees were held in corps headquarters in the presence of COAS and DGISI (c. Jaffrelot 2016). One of the missions of Apex Committees consisted in sending cases to Interior Minister, which are then to be solved in Army courts. But the initiative often came from the army men of the committees, and the concluding verdict was in the hand of the army. The criminals who were tried in military courts were not given a chance to appeal in non-military courts Despite the agenda issued in NAP, the military, which has given more authority and control still distinguish between bad Taliban who are targeting military forces and good Taliban who are promoting Islamabad interests in Kabul and Kashmir. Obviously, fewer targets of NAP have been achieved because the banned organizations are still operating supported by ISI and the Army, which are against of democracy.

Blurred Justice System under NAP

The justice system given by NAP is not clear and consists of many pitfalls while providing justice to the people. The government announced on 10 March 2015 that it would punish all the victims who had committed performances of terrorism. In June 2015, at the start of Ramadan, 170 persons were hanged, many of which were not related to terrorism. Also, the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) records that the flaws in the criminal justice system has further increased the crimes in society. The torture made for force confessions has destroyed the justice system. Poor has been highly damaged because of their non-existing approach to the system. To make NAP more impressive, the military has arrested innocent people in charge of terrorism, which has further deteriorated the society (Report July 2015). According to NACTA, between 24 December and 25 March, some 32,345 people were prisoned on various terrorism-related crimes but rare belonged to radical organizations. On 28 May, NACTA's national coordinator told parliament that 49,000 suspects had been detained after December 2014, but only 129 have a link to the TTP. A clearer example of a blurred justice system under NAP is the issue of missing persons. 

Issue of Missing Persons

As NAP has been implemented without taking in confidence the local population who were attached to the local problems, the issue of force disappearance (missing persons) was raised. Without consulting the local people, the state authorities took in custody the suspicious persons who were not necessarily involved in that crime. They were disappeared forcefully for unlimited time without presenting them to the court. Baloch, Pashtuns (mostly living in FATA), and some numbers from Sindh has been highly suffered from this brutal state policy. In Quetta, the Voice of Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) had several times held a demonstration for the emancipation of missing persons. They appealed to Shirin Mazari, Human Rights Minister, to present a bill in National Assembly regarding the missing persons who are facing brutality from stateside. In a Seminar organized by VBMS in the Quetta press club, the Baloch representative (Politicians and Students) requested the government to stop force disappearance, which is unconstitutional. They said that this is against of National and International law. The person is not given an opportunity to approach a given law for presenting its clearance, and the whole activity and proceeding remains one-sided. VBMP stated that a lot of families of missing persons have been suffered psychologically as well economically because there remains no trace of the missing person.

A wife of a missing citizen, Mushtaq Alias Adil, stated that her husband was lost for four months. "Our economic position is very weak, and offspring have been forced to live on starvation", she stated. She requested the court to make her children see their father. She said that if Mushtaq is not recovered, then she, along with her children, will commit suicide (Recovering of Missing persons, 2019). All these families have been suffered mentally, physically, and economically because of poor connections between local people and state agencies. 

The True Guardian of Society, Police, has been Bypassed in NAP

As the roots of terrorism lie in a society which are known by local people and their representatives and they also know the best remedy of this evil. One of these representatives is Police Department live and train in the respective affected society. It is the Police who know every trace and root of the terrorist elements. So, they should be given the responsibility of tackling terrorism. But unfortunately, here in NAP, this responsibility has been given to the military who is alien to the local people. This is because the given strategy has been implemented through a Top-Down approach that has excluded the local people. The Police has critical capabilities to manage and control crime-rich zones. It was stated by an empirical research agency that Police, not the military, is more effective for this job. It was made clear by the RAND Corporation study titled How Terrorist Groups End, that the evidence has shown that the combined work of Police and intelligence, rather than the use of military force, brings improved counter-terrorism outcomes. Douglas P. Lackey in his article regarding counter-terrorism claims that  "The murder of citizens by terrorists is not war, but murder, so the social category of terrorism is a crime, and terrorists should be classified as criminals" and from this principle he exactly assumes, "If terrorists are criminals, their expected opponents are the police." Lackey has pointed out that many actions against criminals are fall within the scope of the police department like doing a forensic analysis of targeted site, collection of information about terrorist gangs, searching terrorist locations, maintaining a database of the suspect, surveilling suspicious sites and penetrating terrorist groups through the use of undercover agents. Hence, it is the best option of every state to have a good police force for battling terrorism and insurgency (Abbas 2016).

High civilian fatalities and the violation of Human Rights can be occurred by the use of the army in operation. The Army of Pakistan has not been properly trained and equipped to deal properly with internal crises and the regulation of orders. In a true sense, the military should be used as a backup force when needed to Police during operations or any other activities.

Police Law became Outmoded under NAP.

While implementing NAP, no new police law has been established to replace the old one, which do not have the capacity to tackle and control terrorizing elements in society. The current Police law belongs to British time, which was imposed after the independence war of 1857 and was expected to suppress citizens rather than to protect them. It was this law that was inherited by Pakistan. This law was deprived of accountability and was consisted of authoritarianism and suppression. There was not any modern democratic feature in it. This law followed until 2002 in Pakistan till new reforms-oriented orders were passed, but the amendments made in it had damaged its original nature. Dozens of commissions were passed over the past seventy years, but no one has been implemented. During Musharraf's time, National Reconstruction Bureau has copied the Japanese National Safety Commission system to keep a check on police departments at local, provincial, and central levels. Furthermore, a trial system and complaint system for Police was also planned for. Under this system, Police were given the relative authority of investigation and administration. 

Different responsibilities and tasks regarding investigation, intelligence, and guard duties were divided among separate police departments to make it more efficient. But unfortunately, Politicians and Bureaucrats came as a hurdle to this system and introduced many amendments in it in the shape of the Police Act 2004 in which the powers of the impartial and self-governing safety commissions in the sphere of recommending promotions and transfers and awarding these back to politicians, providing them huge relief. On this, an Islamabad police officer has said that in order to secure promotion in a career, one must always obey and follow the orders given by politicians (Abbas 2016). There is also another problem of poor connection among the police departments of four provinces which has badly affected the crime-fighting. Variations in the police laws of the four provinces are yet another issue negatively affecting interprovincial coordination in crime-fighting and counter-terrorism. Insightfully, Ahmer Bilal Soofi,  who was federal minister for law in the caretaker government in 2013, stated that one problem which I observed during my tenure is the absence of uniform police law for all provinces, which create serious confusion among the police officers in this regard.  

Unproductive Strategy

The NAP has not produced any effective strategy to undermine the mind set and rotation in which the radical and terrorist groups are functioning. This is all because the founders did not make any proper cohesion with the community and their local representatives. This defect in NAP has further accelerated the phenomena of society-based terrorism in which the community people and their representatives are highly targeted. Since 2006, the increase of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan has caused big fear and insecurity. But Police have faced this fear with a high cost of their lives but did not disturb the cycle made by insurgents. The good training and capability of militants have also hindered the policymakers to make any efficient policy. The ignorance of Punjab police and intelligence agencies from the tactics used by militants has given them to grow further, mainly in Southern Punjab. As said by Ayesha Siddiqi that there is no willingness of the Punjab government and security sector to keep the focus on four basic Punjab based militant groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e- Muhammad (JeM), and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). These jihadi groups could really be upset by a determined, combined police and intelligence operation” (Abbas 2016). Even though the situation has improved, because attacks in Punjab convinced the provincial government of the source of these troubles, the critical time has been lost in the process. The August 2015 killing of Shuja Khanzada, the interior minister of Punjab, in a suicide bombing attack led by LeJ in collaboration with the Pakistani Taliban shows that the security challenge remains very serious.

Lack of Coordination between Intelligence Services and Police

Due to a lack of trust and coordination between police departments and intelligence agencies, the relationship between militant groups and intelligence agencies has been enlarged, which is a big challenge to tackle by NAP. Because one of the well-informed journalists has said that in every district, there are one or two secret sources who support and inform state-supported militant organizations if Police make any hurdle for them. If Police even try to take any action against the criminal of these militant groups, they quickly receive commands from intelligence agencies to let them go (C. Jaffrelot 2017). The Police hesitate to take any action against these criminals because of their close connection with intelligence agencies. Another problem is the poor data collection related to any crime or criminal. The criminal belonging to any militant religious group cannot be traced efficiently. One officer of NACTA has said that many prisoned militants have not been interviewed by experts, which shows their joint network. Being prohibited under NAP, some banned organization still publish their journals and can change their affiliation to other militant groups not under the check of the government. All this made the Police clueless. This is all because the NAP has been implemented authoritatively and through non-democratic ways in which the local representatives, especially the Police Department, is being neglected. The lack of working together among the police department, military-run intelligence agencies, and civilian rum IB create new problems in tackling criminality (Abbas 2016). For example, the Police and FIA must send requests to the intelligence agencies to get data from telephone companies, to trace calls made by offenders and terrorists, which cause the delay in crime investigation. Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a well-known Pakistani politician who remained interior minister during the Musharraf years, openly recognized that coordination between and among the ISI, IB, Police, and the Special Branch of the Police is far from satisfactory and that intelligence agencies often have information but do not share it with law enforcement agencies.

Ineffective Criminal Justice System

Another ineffectiveness in NAP is the laughable and faulty justice system. There is almost no system to provide safety to the witness. This led the witnesses not to testify against the powerful and dangerous criminals in the court. In the majority cases, the investigating police officers have been murdered by unknown. The witness who testified against Malik Ishaq Khan, a terrorist having charged for more than seventy murders, is lived in more tense and unsecured conditions. Judges are also not safe and face similar security threats  (C. Jaffrelot 2017). Due to the lack of evidence, the terrorist attacked Marriot Hotel in Islamabad were released by the court. The Police have to put the persons under "house arrest" afterward to buy time before challenging the judgments in higher courts. Such inadequacies, unfortunately, have also led to extrajudicial killings as a favorite option for Police, as obvious in the apparently staged “police encounter” killing Malik Ishaq on 29 July 2015.

Lack of Opportunities for Community Cohesion

The NAP has not given society the opportunity to modernize and get rid of traditional ideas. The modernization of every society lies in the modern education system, which is the responsibility of the state. The failure faced by NAP to regulate the problematic societies is due to not delivery of modern education to illiterate societies. The illiteracy rate remained high mainly in KP and FATA areas which are still the main sources of extremist ideas disturbing Pakistan. Higher literacy ratio led to the community cohesion which is the sign of peace. Different research has suggested that higher level of community cohesion might be connected to the minor rate of crimes. Unified communities have the features like the sense of community, similar life opportunities, political trust, respect for diversity and a sense of belonging. So, the communities with these characteristics show a lower level of reported crimes. Community cohesion is directly related to the reduction of street crimes, violence, and mugging. Social control takes the form of people in the cohesive neighborhood being ready to pull together and interfere in divergent or criminal activities for the community's welfare (Spalek 2013). 

Recommendation and Conclusion

Public opinion should be Considered in Policy Formulation.

For every policy to be fruitful, the state needs to give proper weightage to public opinion. In today's democracy, Lipset says, people are given a higher opportunity to influence majority decisions. The state needs to consult people while formulating any policy or people could influence existing policy by means of interest groups. Thus, the interest groups must be considered. These are interest groups, says Pluralists, through which politics functions. Pluralists say that the great secret of democracy lies in making sure that whether government listen to an interest group or not (Roskin, Cord, Medeiros, Jones 2012). Democracy without public opinion is just like planting trees without soil. The quality of intelligent leaders is they are not going too far from public opinion. "Public Opinion is everything in this country" said by Abraham Lincoln. It is public opinion that has the capacity to change the course of history (Hobley 2012).

In a democracy, government needs to use public opinion for guiding their public information and through which to formulate public policy. The method through which public policy and public opinion frequently and dependently interact is the basic interpretation of democracy. The public that react quickly against government action, are like thermostats that regulate government policies. The government needs to shape policy outputs that could address organized public interests. In political representation, the connection between public policy and public opinion is indispensable. Public opinion is an independent variable and is an important driver to change public policy (Christopher Wlezien, Stuart N. Soroka 2016).  

All those issues are public issues on which the legislature and executive have to make decisions. For Jeremy Bentham, an English economist and philosopher, the greatest difficulty for any legislature is to conciliate public opinion, make it correct, and shape it according to the people desires. For Bentham, public opinion is the useful check on ruler's authority. Bentham demands the publication of all official acts so that an enlightened public opinion could pass judgment on them (Davison 2020).

In the case of Pakistan, to counter-terrorism effectively, the government needs to include the local community in formulating counter-terrorism policies. They are local people who know everything and every root of the evil of terrorism. They can suggest the best solution to the problem of society-level terrorism. Therefore, the government of Pakistan needs to give proper weightage to the opinion of these local communities. The terrorism combating policies should be formulated and implemented through a "bottom-up approach". The street-level bureaucrats and the local representatives of people also need to be included in these policies making cycles. These bureaucrats and local representatives have all information and, to a large extent a smart solution to battle this extremism and terrorism. It is hard for the local people to accept and follow the pre-planned policy created by higher authorities. If the opinion of people will not be considered, these people will not show a positive attitude toward the policy and could create hurdles toward government objectives. In other words, it is the Bottom-Up Approach of Policymaking that is recommended to have a positive impact on the overall productivity of any governmental policy.      

Increase Public Awareness

The state of Pakistan needs to spread the level of awareness in the general public about evils and their roots that cause extremism and terrorism. The state should start a media campaign against terrorism. The main factor which will play a vital role in the awaking of people is education. Because it is education that teach human to discriminate between bad and good, the more the level of literacy will high, the less will be the rate of crime. 

Providing Training Support and Equipment

To consume more properly and efficiently the foreign financial aids, Pakistan has a very weak and corrupt system. These aids are used by corrupt Pakistani officers and foreign contractors to benefit themselves. Such types of officers should be investigated and made them accountable for the responsibility they are given. The money come from outside should be used to buy scanners, minor weapons, bulletproof jackets, and armored vehicles, which would be more operative (Nawaz, Counting Militancy and Terrorism in Pakistan, The Civil-Military Nexus October 2016). Further, the focus should be given to the police training academies.   




Help NACTA in Research and Analytical Work

The experienced experts should be given to NACTA to help it in a solution of both internal and external problems. The experts should deal with the crime through scientific and statistical studies and should develop databases useful for counter-terrorism. The government, both at the federal and provincial level, needs to give proper importance to research as an instrument and do proper consultation with "Think Tanks" and experienced persons to guide policy formulating on extremism and terrorism (Parvez 2015). The NACTA team should hold awareness programs in general masses. The evil of terrorism and its bad consequences should be discussed in the school syllabus. It should launch de-radicalization programs. The government is required to give NACTA necessary funds and should make it independent from bureaucracy. Unfortunately, NACTA has already been the target of political turf battles; its first director-general, Tariq Pervez, resigned shortly after taking up the position because of the opposition in some quarters to placing NACTA directly under the prime minister as opposed to the Ministry of the Interior (C. Jaffrelot 2017). The current and the previous government had made announcements to make NACTA powerful, but it took them around years to pass the NACTA legislation. Time is of the essence for Pakistan's counter-terrorism efforts to take some tangible shape. 




Reforms in Criminal Justice Sector

The defense and security should be provided to witnesses, informants, victims, undercover agents, juries, investigators, prosecutors, and judges by the authorities and formulators of NAP in counter-terrorism cases (Yousaf July 2017). Coordination and cooperation should be encouraged among the domestic government agencies while fighting terrorism. It should deliver a legal context and practical measures for electronic scrutiny in counter-terrorism inquiries. NAP should provide for the lawful exercise of pretrial imprisonment of terrorist suspects. 




To Advance a Civilian-led and Intelligence-based Counter-Terrorism Policy

The local and provincial level police departments should be given modern and effective training in combating insurgency. The forces which were working for intelligence purposes should be absorbed in regular Police squads after necessary training. There is also a need of reforms the Evidence Act and shift attention from witness testimony to modern scientific evidence and should enlarge state program of witness, investigator, prosecutor, and judge protection in terrorism cases. The police department needs to make it more autonomous and accountable and the appointment of IG and other high officers should be on merit system (Report July 2015). The internal and external experts should be involved in providing them with proper training regarding the curbing of terrorism and their sources.

Strong Monitoring of Banned Organizations and Individuals

The authorities of NAP need to reunite the banned organizations and persons under Anti-Terrorism Act and UN Security Council Resolution 1267 and provide them to Provincial and Federal Police, Financial Institutions, other law implementing agencies and common masses. The authorities should keep a regular watch on banned groups and persons and hinder them from free movement and financial transaction and bearing arms. It should make sure that all mosques, charities, and madrasas are investigated by Police periodically. 

To Restrain Terrorist Financing and Money Laundering

In Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), there should be a specialized compartment to scrutinize terrorist finance, transaction and money laundering and should be in contact with all provinces police departments. It should develop anti-money laundering and terrorist financing methods. The banks should require to install software that will help in recognizing the persons existing in the list of ATA and to convey these names to local police  (Report July 2015) e. The transactions made by madrasas, mosques, and charities through banks should be analyzed properly and should know about the nature of money.

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