On December 31, 2014, leading members of the media, civil society, political parties and former military and law enforcement officials gathered at the Center for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad, for a roundtable discussion on the counter-terror National Plan of Action, announced by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in the wake of the devastating terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The following is a summary of the discussion, and a list of recommendations for the Pakistan government. A list of participants is below, followed by a list of formal recommendations, and then a short summary of the major themes discussed that do not necessarily fall into any set of recommendations. Participants # Name Organization/Affiliation 1 Ahmer Bilal Soofi Lawyer, former Law Minister 2 AVM (r) Shahzad Chandhry Security Analyst 3 Ayaz Wazir Former Ambassador 4 Dr. Shoaib Suddle Former Federal Tax Ombudsman of Pakistan, Former Head Intelligence Bureau, Former IG Police Sindh/Balochistan 5 Farhatullah Baber Senator PPP, former Press Sec. for President Zardari 6 Gen. (r) Asif Yaseen Malik Former DG ISI, Secretary Defense 7 Gen. (r) Mehmood Aslam Retired Officer 8 Maj Gen.(r) Athar Abbas Former DG ISPR 9 Hashim Babar Qaumi Watan Party 10 Jan Achakzai Spokesperson, JUI-F 11 Mariam Khan CAMP (NGO) 12 Mirwais Khan JUI-F Youth Wing 13 Murtaza Solangi Journalist, Former DG Radio Pakistan 14 Najib Ahmad Radio News Network, FM99 15 Nasim Zahra Journalist, Host Dunya News 16 Naveed Shinwari CEO CAMP 17 Shahzad Akbar Director/FFFR, Legal Fellow Reprieve 18 Syed Talat Hussain Journalist, Host Saach TV, Geo TV 19 Tahira Abdullah Human Rights Activist, HRCP 20 Mian Sanaullah Former Ambassador Formal Recommendations Overarching and Governance Recommendations There is a distinct lack of political will. The National Action Plan's agenda items are not new ideas. There is also a complete lack of ownership, even now. APCs are confidence-building measures, not partners in...

The attack on the school in Peshawar in December shocked the world. In Pakistan, the upshot is a growing military shadow once more looming over a fragile democracy.                               For some it was a show of national solidarity in the wake of the horrific Peshawar school attack. For others, it was an iron-fisted response to terrorism in the country. But for political analysts and critics, the latest amendment to Pakistan’s constitution is nothing less than a soft coup in the making. Pakistan’s parliament—the National Assembly and the Senate—today passed unopposed the 21st amendment and the Pakistan Army Amendment bill 2015, paving the way for military courts. Although the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, called it a bill representative of all parties, a number—including Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), Jamaat-e-Islami and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf—abstained in the vote. The bill allows for military courts, under a military officer, to preside over terror-related cases for two years. In a country which only saw a renewed democratic transition in 2013, after long periods of military rule and premature government departures, establishing special military courts won’t do any good for the cause of democracy. Raza Rabbani, a well-known democrat and member of the Pakistan People’s Party, broke into tears after casting his vote in support of the bill in the Senate. He called his vote a betrayal of his conscience but an obligation towards his party, and said he felt ashamed. Rabbani is not alone in his frustration. Aneditorial in Dawn, the country’s most-read English daily, called the event ‘a sad day’ as it would put the country indirectly under military rule. The government led by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) has rationalised the move as an ‘extraordinary measure for an extraordinary situation’. The Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Public Relations said military courts were not the army’s desire but the need of the hour. While right wing...

Peshawar epitomises the socio-political decline and degeneration of governance structures because of Pakistan’s involvement in two wars next door since December 1979. This turned the city into a favourite destination for the Western world of intelligence, as well as anti-communism religious zealots. Some 25 years later, on December 16, 2014, Peshawar endured a tragedy with an assault on the Army Public School, leaving nearly 150 children and adults dead. This was the cumulative consequence of the policies that the country and its institutions have pursued for long. An air of gloom and doom hangs over Peshawar, which has degenerated into becoming a city with all the symptoms of dysfunction — signs which make a reversal terminally difficult. Deeply-entrenched cynicism, bureaucratic inertia, bloated egos of bureaucrats and politicians, the omnipresent nexus between the militant-mullah and organised crime, and the overarching shadows of a predominant military establishment — caught up in the consequences of its policies of the past — have all combined to turn the provincial capital with an overflowing population into a governance nightmare and a security challenge. They epitomise the governmental decline that Pakistan in general has gone through. Greater Peshawar remains beset with the fallout of an ever-increasing population size — which has at least doubled because of the IDP influx — straining the political economy as well as burdening the social service infrastructure. Peshawar represents the failure of multiple roadblocks that have become a painful nuisance to its residents. The presence of these roadblocks, manned by security personnel, defies common logic. Terrorists never cross these check-points. When they do come, they come heavily armed and mow down 150-odd children and adults. When they decide to kill over a hundred Christians at the All-Saints Church, they do so without detection. What is the point then of erecting security walls and putting up check...

Over 8,000 seminaries have neither been registered with the Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat-e-Madaris Pakistan (ITMP), an umbrella of five schools of thought, nor with the ministry of religious affairs, raising a serious question over their curriculum’s legitimacy and their source of funding. Following the National Action Plan (NAP) committee’s recommendations, officials associated with provinces’ Auqaf departments are gathering data about madaris/makatib which have never been registered with the ITMP, ministry of religious affairs or with the provincial Auqaf departments. ILLEGAL OCCUPATION 31 madras are not registered in Islamabad and are built on encroached land Around 8,249 seminaries which have enrolled 0.3 million students are not registered across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, revealed officials, who will brief ministry of interior next week. “These non-registered madaris/makatib did not fulfil the basic criteria set by the ministry of religious affairs,” a senior official told The Express Tribune. Around 4,135 madaris/makatib are operating without getting proper registration from the designated authorities in K-P, the official said, adding that some 2,411 seminaries are unregistered in Punjab, 1,406 in Sindh and 266 in Balochistan, he explained. At least 31 madaris are not registered in Islamabad where all seminaries are built on encroached land, he revealed and went on to say that even Jamia Hifsa, adjacent to Lal Mosque, also failed to fulfill basic requirements of registration. The official claimed that “Madaris operating in K-P did not cooperate with us.” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that around 605 students were studying in the capital’s unregistered seminaries. The 27 madaris belong to the Deobandi school of thought, two to Barelvi school of thought and one is managed by the Ahle Hadith, he said. Seminaries, whose curriculum is provided by Waqaful Madaris, are registered with Islamabad Auqaf Department. The ITMP...

Visiting Dhaka in the middle of December can be emotionally quite a heavy and heart-wrenching experience for a Pakistani; the air resonates with the beats of Bangladesh’s national anthem. Commemorative ceremonies and special radio/tv transmissions mark the Victory Day (Dec 16) and there are media debates on the cold-blooded executions of over 200 pro-independence intellectuals (Dec 14) by Pakistani forces. The War Memorial and the National Museum offer reflections of what led to the creation of Bangladesh. Whether media or public gatherings, they all ring with the Awami League narrative on independence in 1971, accompanied by a continual criticism of Pakistan. Most Bangladeshis call the conflict spanning nine months war with Pakistan, as  Bangabandhu (Friend of Bengal) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had declared independence from Pakistan on March 25 and from thereon considered Pakistani troops there as “occupation forces.” The video documentary played to visitors at the National Museum also refers to Al-Badr and Al-Shams volunteers as “the beasts” who aided the Pakistani occupation forces. And the special war-crimes tribunals are a living manifestation of an instrument aimed at fixing all those who opposed the freedom struggle. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina set up the tribunal in 2010. Some 23 defendants in 20 cases have been indicted to date, most from Jamaat-e-Islami, which had opposed independence. The tribunal has so far handed down verdicts on 14 defendants – all found guilty of offences including crimes against humanity, murder and rape. Eleven were sentenced to death, two to life in prison and another to 90 years in jail. Two of them have died in prison. The trials of the remaining eight are in progress. On 23 December, a war crimes tribunal handed down death sentence to Syed Mohammad Qaisar, a former minister and leader of the Muslim League, for his involvement in multiple crimes such as mass killings, rape, torture, extortion and other crimes against humanity...

Wednesday (December 31, 2014): Speakers at a roundtable discussion at the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) unanimously demanded swift short and medium –to-long term strategies to counter terror- and extremism and insisted that long term answers to extremism and militancy lie only in good governance and indiscriminate enforcement of rule of law. As many as 20 representatives of political parties, former ambassadors, legal experts, mediamen, political analysts and former senior police and military officials agreed on the need to comprehensive legislation on the article 245 of the constitution of Pakistan.  Pointing to the uproar over the nature of courts, some politicians, most agreed that military courts were in conflict with the fundamental structure of the constitution. They also cautioned against the repercussions of military-led speedy trial courts for the civil-military relations. It could be a partial short-term remedy but the real answer to crime and terror will come from a revamped legal justice system. They also underscored that the country expected more responsibility, maturity and transparency from the parliamentarians, rather than anchoring their arguments in the bitter past. The forum bemoaned the fact that the civilian-military ruling elites lacked the political will to enforce the law and that were reluctant in taking tough decisions. Legal experts - underlined that the ongoing debate on how to counter terrorism lacked clarity. The government must correctly diagonose the root-causes that have landed the country in the current security crisis and increasing radicalization. They said clarity in the debate on the counter-terror measures is required as to whether the parliament  wants to deal with the situation through the civil law or the law of war. They also demanded that mnadrassa reforms (registration, curricula, funding issues) must be taken seriously to mainstream these private institutions. Most participants underscored the need...