The NACTA Shame
The chairman of the National Counter-terrorism Authority (NACTA) resigned on Tuesday and the reasons for his departure are gradually leaking into a wider world. It is a shabby story of political preferment trumping the national interest, of powerful ministers seeking to put their placemen inside this key agency rather than having staff appointed on merit. Most tellingly, it is a tale of how the agency tasked with the formulation and implementation of our national strategy to counter terrorism was to be hobbled from its inception. It seems there are many in positions of influence without the slightest interest in the formulation of such a policy as it would cut across their own vested interests, and they sense threat in the establishment of an agency such as NACTA. Losing Tariq Pervez, who was respected in his field and turned down the chance of a job at the UN is not going to play well with the foreign donors keen to see NACTA up and running.
It is a matter of astonishment and dismay to foreign missions in our country that they cannot link to a specific national counter-terrorism authority and that no national plan or policy to counter terrorism is yet in place. We face terrorism every day of every week of every year. Terrorists are mounting a sustained and determined assault on the very fabric of our society and yet we are unable to formulate a policy to combat them at a national level that will be led from the top and enjoy the support of every province. Thousands of our people die every year as a result of terrorist violence, and tens of thousands are wounded, often severely disabled. The outgoing chairman of NACTA had sought to have the agency under the control of the prime minister's secretariat, and its finances independent and ringfenced from the Interior Ministry. The mandarins of the Interior Ministry liked this not, nor did the interior minister himself who had a list of people he wanted to appoint contrary to the wishes of the chairman who was committed to merit appointments. In the end Tariq Pervez resigned, a disillusioned man who had put his country first only to find that his country had no use for such men. He will be hard to replace and our interior minister may now be swift to move into the vacuum left by his passing.
It is a matter of astonishment and dismay to foreign missions in our country that they cannot link to a specific national counter-terrorism authority and that no national plan or policy to counter terrorism is yet in place. We face terrorism every day of every week of every year. Terrorists are mounting a sustained and determined assault on the very fabric of our society and yet we are unable to formulate a policy to combat them at a national level that will be led from the top and enjoy the support of every province. Thousands of our people die every year as a result of terrorist violence, and tens of thousands are wounded, often severely disabled. The outgoing chairman of NACTA had sought to have the agency under the control of the prime minister's secretariat, and its finances independent and ringfenced from the Interior Ministry. The mandarins of the Interior Ministry liked this not, nor did the interior minister himself who had a list of people he wanted to appoint contrary to the wishes of the chairman who was committed to merit appointments. In the end Tariq Pervez resigned, a disillusioned man who had put his country first only to find that his country had no use for such men. He will be hard to replace and our interior minister may now be swift to move into the vacuum left by his passing.
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