Lahore - Information gathering exercise has been launched in Punjab concerning the listing of unregistered non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and organisations working in violation of their charter, it is reliably learnt.
Sources in the state security services privy to the development against the backdrop of some international NGOs’ shadowy activities told The Nation on Sunday that information gathering exercise has been started for making a catalogue of the unregistered NGOs and such organisations working in violation of their charter in a bid to register the unregistered NGOs and get the complete data of those organisations working in violation of their charter.
They informed that under new tags, the NGOs would be marked under three tags, “Grey, Black and Green.”
Grey would include the NGOs primarily involve in knowingly or unknowingly providing their platform to use against the interests of the country that include promoting activities against our culture, trying to influence opinion on certain issues, such as country’s law on hangings and others.
The NGOs fall under the category of ‘Black’ would include which knowingly uses their platform or provide the same for anti-state activities, like espionage and its other extensions to destabilise their host state. While the ‘Green’ category would include all the NGOs that are working according to their charter.
Informing about more details, they told this correspondent that a civilian intelligence agency was leading the exercise with the key assistance of secret services directly or indirectly falls under the control of the military establishment. While provincial intelligence service would also play its part in the exercise.
They added that though gathering data of the international and local NGOs falls under the domain of a key civilian intelligence agency; however keeping in view the poor working and ongoing anti-terror operations in the country, the intelligence agencies of the military establishment extended their assistance to their civilian colleagues to complete the task.
Officials in the interior ministry, confirming the development, said that all the key intelligence agencies were making joint efforts to deal with this serious issue.
They added that intelligence actions of this nature would be further accelerated keeping in view the growing external threats, which could not be materialised without the assistance from within the country. All the facilitators whether of the terrorists or the NGOs working against the interests of the state would be neutralised.
In the meantime, reports of restoration of the operations of Save the Children have created frenzy in the security establishment circles. A senior member of a premier secret service monitoring the activities of international NGOs in the province told this scribe that informing the government about the ‘Grey or Black’ actions of these organisations was their duty and they prefer to restrict themselves to their mandate.
However, the news reports regarding restoration of Save the Children operations in the country has put in wonder his community.
Brigadier (Retd) Ghanzanfar who headed the ISI in Punjab sharing his experiences about the working of the NGOs said, “It is beyond shadow of doubt that local and international NGOs violate their charter.
The agencies during my command reported incidents of NGOs activities in violation of their charter and even their involvement as an extension of foreign secret services espionage activities.”
When asked how many of his former agencies reports helped banning the grey or black NGOs, he said that some of the NGOs were banned but it was unfortunate that political leaderships had allowed some of them to resume their activities. He said that gathering information on NGOs basically falls in the domain of the interior ministry and provincial home department that naturally involves Intelligence Bureau and Special Branch.
However, in case of international NGOs and local NGOs, working as extensions of the former does checked by the ISI.