As always, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is unhappy. He is unhappy about the response of provincial law enforcement authorities regarding the implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) and warned officials to take the task seriously. He was the one who was the Chair of the executive board meeting of NACTA which was to discuss the implementation of the anti-terrorism national action plan. If law enforcement has been lacking, he too should be held accountable for his ineffective executive planning and decisions. For someone who is heading 12 out of 17 committees constituted to monitor or implement the National Plan of Action, it is his job to get the train on the track.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan also admitted the money transacted to madressahs from abroad could not be traced. This is a huge gap in intelligence. In this day and age, even if transactions are informal, phone signals and calls can easily be traced. Again, he said that this was the provinces’ fault that laws under which madressahs had been registered were devolved to the provinces under the 18th Amendment and their control was a provincial problem. So why is nothing under control yet in Punjab, the home of the PMLN, where the minions of the Lal Masjid have been running amok with threats and statements against the state?
A survey done in 2010 found that, while many madrassa students had tolerant views, 82% of those belonging to Deobandi madrassas saw the Taliban as a model for Islamizing Pakistan. In 2011, the Interior Ministry estimated the number of madrassas in Pakistan to be 20,000 with over three million students. Of these, 11,000 madrassas belonged to the Deobandi sect and had been declared “sensitive”. Where is this research and why is it not being used? Is the government actually looking into these seminaries? The government only just woke up on the 16th of December, but has it already decided that there are too many loopholes and seminaries cant be controlled or shut down? While Chaudhry Nisar said that some madressahs were receiving financial support from Muslim countries, he went on to say that there was “sufficient control and vigilance” within these laws to monitor the working of seminaries, including checking their financial sources and conducting an audit. The Minster is tripping over his own words, but another problem, that this government cant and wont talk about, is of the countries that fund seminaries. The fact is, we all know who they are.