Such a policy can help prevent potentially extremist individuals from a crossing a line and becoming terrorists. Counter-terror and military operations have remained a major part of Pakistan’s security policy since 2004. Yet, even with such a heavy-handed focus on security, Pakistan still lacks a comprehensive policy on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE); with only a generic National Action Plan (with 20 broad points) as the only referred document on such matters. Even though the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), under its Directorate of Countering Violent Extremism, has formulated a National Counter Extremism Policy (NECP), very little information is available on it for the general public. Ironically, NACTA’s national international security policy (NISP) only gives a passing reference to violent extremism a couple of time in its 94 page document, along with a clichéd overemphasis on madaris as a source of radicalisation and terror recruitment. Countering Violent Extremism — also referred to as Preventing Violent Extremism — has remained a major topic of focus among policy makers since the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks in USA and the UK respectively. It was in 2015 that the concept took the centre-stage in global counter-terror policymaking with a three day conference in the White House, chaired by President Obama and attended by ministers from almost 70 countries, followed by a side-line session at the United Nations General Assembly. This also led to a major CVE policy announced by the Obama administration focusing on early signs and intervention of extremism. The major focus of the policy against extremism ought to be on structural causes like lack of religious tolerance, government failures and political, economic, and social marginalization One of the major focuses of any CVE is its focus on structural causes of extremism such as lack of religious tolerance, government/administrative failure, and political, economic, and social marginalisation. By focusing...

Fourteen-year-old Insha Malik lies unconscious in the surgical ICU of the Sri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital in Srinagar, her eyes pierced by pellets. The damage caused to her vision, according to a doctor attending her, is irreparable. “Her right eye has been ruptured and her left eye is lacerated. She will be blind in both eyes for her entire life,” said the doctor. Among the toppers in her school at Sedow village in Shopian district, the class 9 student is the latest pellet-victim admitted to the SMHS hospital where hundreds of civilians – mostly teenagers injured in action by security forces in the wake of July 8 killing of militant commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani – are recuperating. According to Vakil Ahmad, her cousin, Insha was having dinner at home on Tuesday evening when the pellets fired outside by security forces personnel came inside the kitchen and hit the teenage student in her face. With each passing hour the hospital receives fresh eye-injury cases, most of them from south Kashmir, the epicentre of renewed protests in the Valley after the killing of Burhan. While the 70-bed ophthalmology ward of the hospital is full with the patients including teenagers and even minors, the administration had to manage space in the adjacent ward No. 3 and 4 (medicine wards) for treatment of eye-injury patients. “We have already operated upon 102 patients with pellet injuries in one or both eyes,” said Dr S. Tariq Qureshi, head of the ophthalmology department at SMHS, adding that while 42 of these patients would regain “good vision” in their injured eye(s), the remaining cases would require multiple surgical interventions before “anything can be said about them.” Termed a “non-lethal” weapon by the government, pellet guns were used by the police and CRPF for the first time in 2010 as a means of quelling protests. The pellets, essentially tiny ball bearings, come in grades of 5 to 12 – 5 being the fastest and most damaging, said a police official, adding the...

Fourteen-year-old Insha Malik lies unconscious in the surgical ICU of the Sri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) hospital in Srinagar, her eyes pierced by pellets. The damage caused to her vision, according to a doctor attending her, is irreparable. “Her right eye has been ruptured and her left eye is lacerated. She will be blind in both eyes for her entire life,” said the doctor. Among the toppers in her school at Sedow village in Shopian district, the class 9 student is the latest pellet-victim admitted to the SMHS hospital where hundreds of civilians – mostly teenagers injured in action by security forces in the wake of July 8 killing of militant commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani – are recuperating. According to Vakil Ahmad, her cousin, Insha was having dinner at home on Tuesday evening when the pellets fired outside by security forces personnel came inside the kitchen and hit the teenage student in her face. With each passing hour the hospital receives fresh eye-injury cases, most of them from south Kashmir, the epicentre of renewed protests in the Valley after the killing of Burhan. While the 70-bed ophthalmology ward of the hospital is full with the patients including teenagers and even minors, the administration had to manage space in the adjacent ward No. 3 and 4 (medicine wards) for treatment of eye-injury patients. “We have already operated upon 102 patients with pellet injuries in one or both eyes,” said Dr S. Tariq Qureshi, head of the ophthalmology department at SMHS, adding that while 42 of these patients would regain “good vision” in their injured eye(s), the remaining cases would require multiple surgical interventions before “anything can be said about them.” Termed a “non-lethal” weapon by the government, pellet guns were used by the police and CRPF for the first time in 2010 as a means of quelling protests. The pellets, essentially tiny ball bearings, come in grades of 5 to 12 – 5 being the fastest and most damaging, said a police official, adding the...

India is trying to pin Pakistan down in domestic conflicts, as it expands its influence through trade with Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world In a recent interview with the Voice of America, the Under Secretary of State Alice Wells made a rare reference to Pakistan’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and the region. “I believe that Pakistan’s strategic interests are going to be served by a stable and peaceful Afghanistan and so how do we work together to achieve a stable and peaceful Afghanistan. ... what is of our overriding priority in the region which is stabilising Afghanistan.” If the US and other countries pursue their strategic interests — often to the disregard of issues such as sovereignty and international human rights charter — why should they have an issue with Pakistan pursuing its interests? This is a theme that has possibly evolved ever since Richard Olson, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olson, began peddling it since his retirement early this year. Pakistan considers the Afghan Taliban as its “core strategic asset” and thus unlikely to abandon them. ... for the Pakistani establishment, the Afghanistan policy is “about geo-strategic manoeuvring against India,” Olson had said in April during a talk on Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Stimson Institute in Washington. This realisation or the acknowledgement of it has been missing in Washington all these years. Inherent in the “do-more or face consequences” mantra is the US monopoly over decision-making, both for itself and others — all in the name of national interests. This propensity essentially disregards other nation’s right to take decisions for them. And thus results in occasional frictions with other countries. This has also defined the Pak-US relationship in since the traumatic 9/11 terrorist attacks, and obstructed a logically understandable conversation on peace in Afghanistan. That is why the uproar and wave of concern in the aftermath of the Trump...