ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said that Pakistan’s fight against terrorism has indeed been a success story, adding that the Country has witnessed a sharp decline in terror related incidents.
While addressing participants of 106th National Management Course, the minister observed that law and order has improved significantly during recent years as a result of concerted efforts by all stakeholders including civilian governments, armed forces, police, civil armed forces and intelligence agencies.
“We have never let political divisions come in way of security cooperation and have always extended maximum cooperation to provincial governments regardless of their political affiliations,” he said.
The minister said that the improvement in the security situation is result of shared efforts and credit for improved security situation goes to all stakeholders.
Chaudhry Nisar said that from a peak of over 2,000 incidents in 2010, last year’s figure stands at 785 out of which 285 incidents did not involve any loss of life.
Talking about past and present security situation and various developments, he observed that present government with complete civil-military consensus pursued option of dialogue with militants to explore peaceful option to the problem.
Nisar said that the government gave eight months to process of dialogue to bear any results and added that after option of dialogue was exhausted, the military operation was launched with full homework and putting a place a robust integrated security mechanism to meet internal security challenges.
The interior minister said that after the National Action Plan (NAP) was formulated, practical steps were taken and an effective mechanism was put in place for mutual intelligence sharing not only among various intelligence agencies but also between federal and provincial governments.
On border management and regulating cross border movement, the minister observed that fencing of western border with effective surveillance mechanism would significantly help in checking illegal and cross border movement of unwanted elements.
The minister said that the present government took the decision of fencing of western border in view of frequented cross border movement.
Nisar said that when he took over as the interior minister, incoming and outgoing movement of individuals was recorded between 30,000 to 50,000 on daily basis via Torkham border alone and that too without any documentation.
Chaudhry Nisar said that the present government has regulated this frequented movement by making travel document mandatory for crossing purposes and added by 2020, four more crossing points would be added to western border in addition to two existing crossing points.
The minister said that within next 2-3 years, an effective border surveillance system would be in place on western border with watch towers, cameras and movement detection sensors.
