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Friday January 10, 2025

Pakistan needs national plan to check security threats

By Asim Yasin
August 14, 2021

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Institute of Research and Reforms (IRR) and former interior minister Senator Abdul Rehman Malik has said a doable, strategised, and comprehensive national plan is the need of the hour to cope with the escalating security threats after the ongoing unrest in Afghanistan.

“The situation in Afghanistan will have implications for Pakistan and the government should immediately convene a joint sitting of parliament to devise a doable, strategised, and comprehensive national plan,” he said while chairing a seminar organised by the Centre for Global and Strategic Studies (CGSS) for its interns who visited the Institute of Research and Reforms (IRR) on Friday in Islamabad. The seminar was attended by a large number of students led by Dr Muhammad Omar Hayat, Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Bahria University, and management of the CGSS.

Addressing the seminar, Senator Rehman Malik said regionally, geographically and politically, Pakistan is an important country in the world, and being a nuclear power, it has an important place in the international community, particularly among the Muslim countries. He said Pakistan has always played an important and positive role in the world peace and fought the war on terror along with the US. He said the development of any country depends on its law and order situation. He said unfortunately, we have an enemy in the shape of a neighbour that has always wanted destabilisation of Pakistan.

He said India has a hand in deteriorating Pakistan’s internal security situation and is involved in terrorist activities in Balochistan, for which it is using the Afghan soil. He said India’s involvement in terrorism in Pakistan was proved from the arrest of RAW agent Kulbhushan Yadav, who has confessed to his country’s involvement in fuelling sectarianism and ethnicity in Pakistan.

He said there is a strong nexus between the Indian agency RAW and Afghan NDS against Pakistan carrying and fuelling anti-state activities and acts of terrorism in various parts of the country.

India is spreading anti-Pakistan propaganda at every international forum and politically influenced the FATF against Pakistan.

The senator said Pakistan is facing serious threats of violent extremism, sectarianism, terrorism, militancy, and external interference, which have adversely affected our economic stability, progress, and social harmony.

He said Pakistan was pushed into the war on terror by the US and in the last 20 years, it continued the single demand of ‘Do More’. He said today when the US has withdrawn its forces from Afghanistan, leaving behind a huge mess, yet it is asking Pakistan for ‘Do More’.

He said extremism in Pakistan started during the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, causing internal security threats. “Thousands of Jihadis landed in Pakistan to fight the Soviet Union and were left with nothing to do after the war,” he said.

Senator Rehman Malik also presented a set of his books to Dr Muhammad Umar Hayat, Head of Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Bahria University, Islamabad, and certificates and mementos were distributed among the students and management of the CGSS.