WHAT should the new national security policy look like? This is a million-dollar question and a challenge for both the security establishment and parliament. The job was initially left to the interior ministry, which is still struggling to find the right answers.

This may not be a problem of vision in general terms, but that of the clout of policy narratives which perceives things only in black and white. The political parties including those with a religious bent, the media and civil society leaders are playing with public sentiments as they limit the entire counterterrorism discourse to either ‘talks’ or ‘operation’. Now it has become difficult for the government to conceive of a solution beyond these two phrases. This has caused the collective threat perception to be translated into confused and ineffective actions by the government.

The PML-N government developed the initial contours of its national security framework with a greater focus on peace talks; most of the other initiatives were a continuation of the security sector’s reform policies of the previous government, except for the formation of the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS).

The task of formulating a new internal security policy was given to the federal interior ministry, which has come up with a draft after seven months and presented it to the federal cabinet. The cabinet has advised improvements in the draft to address neglected issues. Nobody exactly knows what components this policy contains except for the broader outline the interior minister shared with the media. According to the media report, the first component of the policy is a secret and will not be revealed. The second is strategic and gives a road map on how to proceed, while the third part involves the operational aspect. Not much can be deduced about the direction of the interior ministry’s national security policy from such opaque statements, and it is not clear what is meant by ‘secret’ and which parts of the policy will fall under this category.

The challenge is beyond the capacity of the interior ministry’s bureaucracy. It is known that the major gaps in internal security responses include the lack of coordination among different institutes and departments. At the same time, incorporating existing responses in a comprehensive policy also remains to be done.

More importantly, gaps exist in the regional strategic approach in that it fails to address the dichotomies in internal security challenges and regional interests. These critical challenges require an institutional mechanism to synchronise the civil-military contribution and the formation of a national security policy in order to remove the gaps.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took a decision which could have provided that mechanism. This decision was the establishment of the CCNS. According to this, the prime minister was to head the CCNS while the top military brass was to have a status equal to the civilian members on the committee. An office of a ‘civilian’ national security adviser was established to make this new body functional.

Experts believe that the CCNS can strengthen and deepen the consultative process between the political government and the military provided the committee functions regularly and the civilians take up security and defence affairs in a more professional manner.

Secondly, it would at least start the process of civilian ownership of foreign and security policies in a country where defence and security affairs, including key foreign policy areas, have been off-limits to civilian governments.

At the time of its inception, it was decided that the CCNS would meet once a month, but it did not meet even once until the end of 2013. The government needs to take this initiative seriously as it could help remove many political, strategic and operational ambiguities in the security policy discourse.

There is a need to make the CCNS functional as it offers an excellent opportunity to connect the scattered responses to a broader counterterrorism policy. Apart from being a policymaking and decision-making body, the CCNS can be given the role of coordinating among various institutions.

The Pakistan Security Report 2013, released by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies has suggested that the key objective of coordination must be to connect both political responses and operational strategies and to evolve a monitoring and evaluation mechanism to keep a check on the performance of different institutions and departments. It will be helpful in reviewing and amending the strategies in the context of the changing nature of the threats.

The CCNS secretariat can resolve the issue of intelligence-sharing and coordination among the various intelligence and law-enforcement departments. A separate joint intelligence committee can be formed under the umbrella of the CCNS, and a special committee of the body can forward information to the relevant departments for operational purposes. The National Counter Terrorism Authority can act as an advisory body to the CCNS, with its special focus on data processing and developing assessments.

To remove ambiguities in operational and political strategies, the CCNS should be made responsible as a coordinating and implementing body for political interventions, including peace talks with militants, reintegration of the militants in the mainstream and counter-extremism measures. This is an area where the CCNS can engage with other segments of society including civil society and media.

The current functional overlaps found among provincial law enforcement bodies, the interior ministry and the security forces can be easily identified, and duplications removed for effective operational responses. Pakistan is facing serious and diverse security problems which cannot be resolved through the uni-dimensional approach of ‘talks or operation’.

The writer is a security analyst.