NATIONAL INTERNAL SECURITY POLICY: AN ASSESSMENT

Abstract

For the last few years, Pakistan has faced many traditional and nontraditional security threats. Among them, the fatal threat is terrorism and extremism in the country, which has largely been connected with the Afghan war. After 9/11, terrorism and extremism got triggered in Pakistan, in which the country faced heavy consequences in terms of economy, loss of life, and destruction of infrastructure. This grave situation compelled the government to develop a comprehensive national security policy to address the growing threats. In 2014, the government enacted the first NISP 20142018. The focus was to initiate military operations in FATA areas to eliminate the terrorist’s hold, which achieved some positive outcomes in the short run. In 2018, prior to the general elections, the previous government announced another NISP 2018-2023. The implementation of that newly announced security policy was handed over to the new government. It was observed that the policy could not achieve the desired outcomes, as there were certain loopholes in the formulation and implementation of these stages. In this regard, the focus of the current research is, to critically analyze the drawbacks of NISP for the period of 2018-2023.
 Keywords: extremism, NAP, NACTA, NISP, security, terrorism