Countering Terror Financing

Realizing the gravity of the situation, the first ever National Internal Security Policy of Pakistan 2014-2018 (NISP) gave overarching guidelines to protect the national interests of Pakistan by enhancing deterrence and capacity of the security apparatus to neutralize the threats to the internal security of Pakistan. The emphasis was on giving a lead role to Counter Terrorism Departments (CTD) through reorganization and activation comprising intelligence, operations, investigations and other technical sections enabling them to tackle the entire spectrum of internal security threats, including terrorism and subversive activities.

The National Action Plan further augmented and simplified those points, according highest priority to choke terror financing. In line with the same spirit, the Home Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in order to achieve the goals set by NISP, formed a working group for reforms in the criminal justice system in 2014. The group recommended the formation of units of anti-money laundering and cybercrime in the Counter Terrorism Department. But, unfortunately, it has not seen the light of the day so far which has hampered the capacity of the Counter Terrorism Department.

Although, different entities involved in the process of countering terror appear to be doing hard work to transform challenges into opportunities, the country is still in thick soup. The requirements of the FATF are hanging over Pakistan like the word of Damocles and the country is struggling hard to come out of the grey list. The agitating question is why is Pakistan in a Catch 22 situation? While analyzing the documents of National Internal Security 2014-2018, 2018-2022 read with the National Action Plan, it is found that all good phrases, analytical skills, goals and timeslines at the implementation stage have an abysmally low outcome. All the clichés of functional specialization used in the legal lexicon and the policies lose their meaning, ultimating exposuing the weak capacity of the whole hierarchy dealing with terror financing.

When the hammer of international agencies comes down, the system reacts abruptly, such as bashing Non-Profit Organisations and actions against them under maintenance laws. Suddenly, the office of the DC, the Counter Terrorism Department, the Special Branch, Industries and others spring into action one after the other in a mechanical fashion, tarring all with the same brush and asking in a harassing manner for information within hours. Usually, such ire falls on genuine Non-Profit Organisations also known as NGOs, whereas a blind eye is turned to places of worship and seminaries. The area covered is within a short radius, even in such posh places as Hayatabad in Peshawar.

The situation does not demand knee-jerk action but sound strategy by a core team of specialists, even if they are from outside the government. It needs to be understood that one of the most important elements of strategy is to examine the baseline. Having worked out the weak areas, forward movement can be made by plugging the gaps and taking remedial measures. Today, the weak area is the capacity of the implementing agencies such as the FIA and the Counter Terrorism Department. They still suffer from the problems of functional specializtion, having nominal specialists in comparison to the magnitude of the problem. The heads of such departments are usually generalists having no expertise in the relevant areas.

There is a need to not only provide crash training programmes but to also induct functional experts in the Counter Terrorism Department and the FIA, specializing in countering-terrorism and cyber crime. Moreover, a careful selection of their heads who have a clear understanding of these issues is imperative.