ISLAMABAD: A month after the PML-N government announced it and debated it in the parliament; the National Internal Security Policy (NISP) continues to draw fire from the opposition political parties and security analysts.

Participants in a roundtable discussion organized here by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency on Wednesday rubbished the policy, unveiled on February 26, as vague, flawed and devoid of substance.

Air Vice Marshal (retired) Shahzad Chaudhry summed up the discussion with the biting remark that “fighting terrorism is an art as well as science, but we continue to follow it as a philosophy”.

Interestingly, the event coincided with the commencement of direct talks between the representatives of the government and the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) when dialogue forms the main plank of the NISP in resolving conflicts.

Defence analyst Chaudhry said the policy “touches various subjects but completes none”. He did not think the idea of a joint intelligence directorate, that the NISP proposed to establish, would work. Intelligence agencies do not freely share their information with others, according to him.

All intelligence agencies are sale points, and it is for the customers to extract required information from them, he said, reminding that “intelligence coalition is a headache across the world”.

In his input to the discussion, Senator Farhatullah Babar of PPP called for reversing “the policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds”. Instead of “reflex action” being the response to terrorist acts, he wanted “the State treat all militant groups alike and must not have favourites among the non-state actors”.

For example, he said, just three days before the government announced its internal security police, Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad outfit traveled to Muzaffarabad with protocol to participate in the launching ceremony of Afzal Guru’s book.

Similarly, the outlawed Lashkar-e-Tayba resurrected itself as Jamaat-ud-Daawa and working as a charity organisation. The PPP senator noted that the government of Punjab allocated Rs60 million for the charity in its budget.

Sen Farhatullah Babar said those familiar with the United States’ Patriot Act and national security policy can easily discover the NISP to be “a mere cut-and-paste work, that too undertaken in a rush”.

He expressed surprise that the role of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) defined in the policy also includes law enforcement. “This is something the civil society should protest as the ISI is an intelligence gathering body and not a law enforcement agency,” he said.

Dr Farooq Sattar, parliamentary leader of MQM in the National Assembly, saw a need to decide whether the Taliban are friend or foe of Pakistan. “We must decide if they are our asset or liability,” he said, warning “a conspiracy is being hatched to divide the country in the name of religion”.

The MQM leader stressed that militants should be treated like militants and that “terrorists should in no way be allowed to implement their policy of divide and rule”. A certain class of people wants to impose their brand of Islam on the country by force, according to him.

Dr Farooq Sattar emphasised the need to de-radicalize the society. “Otherwise dialogue in isolation would not work,” he warned. He proposed establishing counter-terrorism bodies and rapid response force in the provinces to avoid, what he called, “a ping pong of allegations” between the Centre and provinces over the failures in fighting terrorism at home.

In this context, he referred to the relocation of an anti-terrorism court in Karachi to Malir Cantonment in the city and asked will the district courts of Islamabad be shifted to GHQ in the aftermath of the recent terror attack there?

“And what if the GHQ is also attacked?” he wondered.

MNA Shirin Mazari of PTI found “many elements of great importance” missing in the NISP document. She wanted the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta) taken out of its “bureaucratic mould” and put under parliamentary oversight.

She called NISP a tactical paper released in the name of security policy. Policies have longer term perspective, not the 2014-2018 term that the government assigned the NISP, same as its own.

She wanted a policy with proper institutional framework, capable of winning back brain-washed youth who were not hardcore terrorists. “We need to understand the psyche of suicide bombers”, she said.

Former Interior Secretary Tasneem Noorani said the policy was announced with fanfare but did not elicit much response. Whatever response came was confused because “the policy is a laundry list of all possible remedial actions that can be taken without any clear action plan except to leave everything to Nacta, the focal body, to figure out”.

“And secondly because it has so much jargon. It appears impressive without clarifying much,” added the former bureaucrat.

“Though the NISP talks about unifying all civil armed forces under the umbrella of Pakistan Border Service, it does not explain how making a Pakistan Border Service will improve effectiveness of the civil armed forces,” observed the old hand of the interior ministry, which produced the NISP.