Pakistan’s Governance breakdown and the need of financial resources to cater demand of smaller administrative units

DND News Report:
The government of Pakistan has appointed Major General Faisal Naseer as the National Coordinator of National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) who had been serving in intelligence agencies since long. Till now NACTA had been run through officers of Police Service of Pakistan (PSP) or through Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) cadre.

Pakistan is currently fighting a decisive war against Indian-sponsored terrorism and success lies in synchronization and coordination among all branches of the state. Since Pakistan Army is leading this war from front, the appointment of Major General Faisal Naseer who has vast experience of intelligence, command and military discipline is the best decision.
Unfortunate to say that NACTA in past lagged to respond the state’s demands due to several reasons, two of them had been lack of resources and a cadre-less structure. It had to borrow officers/staff from different departments and manage the operations within meagre available resources. Now this appointment of Major General Faisal Naseer would be useful to restructure the entire organization. Last 10 years had been very crucial for the role of NACTA that this organization apparently to serve. The Government of Pakistan adopted the National Action Plan (NAP), a 20-point counter-terrorism and counter-extremism framework, in December 2014 following the deadly terrorist attack on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, in which 149 people, including 132 schoolchildren, were martyred prompted the government and political leadership to develop a comprehensive national strategy against terrorism and extremism.
The NAP was approved at an All Parties Conference (APC) on December 24, 2014, and subsequently endorsed by Parliament. It was designed to bring military, intelligence, law-enforcement, judicial, financial and administrative measures together under a single national framework. NACTA had responsibility to coordinate with provinces, departments, individuals to ensure execution of 20 points that demanded changes in educational system, security, policing, narrative building against terrorism and separatist organizations. Out of 20, the only one point-that was kinetic action against terrorists was executed through Pakistan Army and security agencies while 19 that were mostly related with provincial administration and fell in provincial domain yet to wait for execution.
Previous national Coordinators of NACTA in last 10 year plus period include Dr. Khalid Chauhan (19-02-2025-September 2026 PSP), Muhammad Khalid Khattak (05-11-2024 to 14-12-2024 – PSP), Mr. Muhammad Tahir Rai (01-03-2022 to 29-08-2024 – PSP), Mehr Khaliq Dad Lak (03-09-2018 to 24-02-2022 – PSP), Dr. Muhammad Suleman Khan (03-07-2018 to 29-08-2018 – PSP) and Ihsan Ghani (21-08-2015 to 02-07-2018 – PSP).
A major component of NAP was the strengthening of the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and the development of an effective intelligence-sharing mechanism among security and law-enforcement agencies that was achieved due to several reasons including few financial resources and every changing administrative hierarchy, however, NACTA did a good job regarding helping the other departments to targeting terrorist financing and choking sources of funding but practically failed to prevent terrorists from exploiting social media, communication platforms and conventional media for propaganda and recruitment. In this field, the responsibilities were also shared with media managers of federal as well as provincial governments. Action against hate speech, extremist material, terrorist literature and propaganda still await verifiable actions.
Another major area covered by NAP was the registration and regulation of madrassas and it is still on-going process and 100 percent documentation and registration has yet not been achieved. Due to the incomplete implementation of the National Action Plan, terrorists and their facilitators are somehow taking advantage of the weaknesses of the system and harming Pakistan, which has been mentioned many times by the Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir and DG ISPR. In such a situation, the appointment of General Faisal Naseer to breathe life into a dormant institution like NACTA is a very important and commendable act because General Faisal Naseer has extensive experience in counter-terrorism and his appointment to this appointment will prove to be an important milestone in the elimination of terrorism, terrorists and their facilitators.
One of its key responsibilities of NACTA is to receive, collate and analyse data, information and intelligence and coordinate with relevant stakeholders to prepare threat assessments and this is a handy work of person such as General Faisal Naseer who had a deep-rooted knowledge of data collection and analysis.
Under the command of General Faisal Naseer, it is expected that NACTA coordination among provincial governments would increase that would help preparing comprehensive national strategies for countering terrorism and extremism and reviewing these strategies periodically. NACTA is also tasked with reviewing relevant laws and recommending amendments to the Federal Government where necessary to strengthen the legal framework for combating terrorism and extremism. This issue had been a problem for security agencies that current judicial system seems helping terrorists instead of security agencies and in over 80 percent cases, accused terrorists get bails from courts and again engage attacking Pakistan, even Anti-Terrorist courts have their legal limitations. It is hoped NACTA would work now effectively to review, revisit and recommend changes in (Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) that are needed by security agencies to fight terrorism in befitting manners.