 So, just drop me a line, just drop me a line. What? Where did you get this email from? Where is the bank? I am also an attachment from JNG. That's a service. Both of them. I can't tell you. It's the same level. All right. All right. So, government and... I don't know. You also try, sir. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's important. We'll just give it a couple more minutes, and then we'll begin. Thanks. Good afternoon all, thank you for joining us for this panel on Pakistan security situation. My name is Moid Yusuf, I direct the South Asia program here at USIP and have been here for too long to remember. But today's event is really special, at least for me, but also for Pakistan watchers, because I don't think any of us who are interested in this country and what has been going on there for the past decade or so can forget the 16th of December 2014, and I don't think any of us will. This is of course the Bishawar attack on the army public school, 150 or upwards is the number of young innocent kids killed in that attack, and you've heard all sorts of stories of survivors, of those who didn't survive, of parents, of the government, etc. What we are here to discuss is what came out of this at the Pakistan government and state level. I was in Pakistan throughout this period, just before Bishawar happened, then when it happened and then the two weeks after, and I have to say that I personally have not seen the Pakistani people and the state moved in a way that this attack did. I mean, there have been many, many horrendous attacks in Pakistan before this, but there was something about this, which really shook everybody and it's quite obvious what it was. The hope then of course was that after this, the state will actually get its act together on some of the things that it hasn't managed to so far, and this will really be a turning point for Pakistan in its fight against terrorism. There have been a number of steps that have been taken by the government and the various provincial authorities since, which I let my speakers talk to, but the real question we want to answer today is what does all of this mean? One has come up with various security policies, various security strategies over the past four, five, six, seven years, some very high-profile ones like the national internal security policy last year, which went through a whole process of consensus-building over a year and then they came up with an internal security document, a new one that we hear or a new term we hear after Bishawar is the national action plan, and there are many others. What does all of this amount to, are we really looking or looking at a point where things are going to take a turn for the better irreversibly so, or is this just a blip where things may go back to where they've been? To talk about all of this, we have a very special panel, and I'm grateful to the three panelists here for joining us. I'll introduce them very briefly. None of them actually need any introductions. I'm sure all of you have either heard or seen or met them. But let me just quickly introduce them and then we'll get to business. Peter Lavoie, to my left, a long, long, long-time Pakistan expert, has lived in Pakistan, speaks the native language. He is now a partner at Monitor 360, a Washington-based firm. Before that, he was the acting assistant secretary for defense at the DOD. He served in the office of the National Intelligence Director and various other hats before that. He's been an academic as well. But if anybody knows the nuclear and non-proliferation field in South Asia, you wouldn't have missed Peter's name. So Peter, thank you very much for being here. To my right is my current colleague, Raza Rumi, who is a senior Pakistan expert at USIP, is doing a very interesting study on internal security in Pakistan for us. And he'll be speaking through parts of that study today. Raza, otherwise, is a former Pakistani civil servant. And he wears more hats than I care to remember, to be honest. He's been with the Asian Development Bank. He's a journalist. He's anchored a TV program. He is a habitual or addicted Twitter fan, whichever way you want to put it. And virtually everything else. But he's somebody who's very well recognized for his commentary on Pakistani politics. He also is somebody who had the unfortunate event of being attacked by militants in Pakistan not too long ago. And that's one of the reasons that he came to the US. Mr. Zulfiqar Hamid is an even more special guest. He happens to be in Washington right now with the New America Foundation. But he's a serving Pakistani police officer who served as the Deputy Inspector General of Investigations in Lahore and has held various other senior police posts in the Punjab. And one of the reasons to have him here is this whole talk about Punjab and Southern Punjab being the hotbed of extremism, but not being touched. And there's all sorts of controversies around that. So we'll hear from the horse's mouth, if you will, on what the challenges of security and policing and counterterrorism in Punjab are. So with that, let me stop here and go to my guest. We'll start with Peter, come to Raza, and then go to Mr. Hamid, and then we'll open it up for questions. Thanks. Okay, thank you very much, Moid. And thank you for the opportunity to be here and an opportunity to discuss this very, very important issue. And it's a very hard issue to talk about as well. We're really talking about not just one event that has catalyzed the nation of Pakistan into a desire for action. But frankly, when I was serving in the government and other points, I've heard this said so many times before, after Benazir Bhutto's assassination, after other really notable, terrible attacks in the country, after the attack on the Karachi airport that galvanized public opinion. And most recently this terrible attack on the school in Peshawar. And the question that really I'm grappling with, how much does it take? How much suffering will it take to actually galvanize the nation into real action to more meaningfully curb this threat? And so what I did is leverage some of the tools of the company I work for now, Monitor360, a small consulting company that does big data analytics to actually look at how people in different organizations or different countries view the world and how they think about change in those circumstances. So if you bear with me, I've got a short presentation to walk you through the method we're using and really focus in on the narratives that are at play very dynamically at play in Pakistan today and how these narratives create space or constrain the opportunities for the government to take more meaningful action and constrain or create opportunities for the United States and other concerned countries to engage Pakistan and to come up with collaborative programs to address the threat. So that's what I'll do if we can go to, I guess I'm in control here. It's a change. When you leave the government, you have a little more autonomy. So really the two questions I'll be talking about here are what Pakistani elites, and I'll define that term more specifically in a moment, how they think about the causes of the terrorist violence in Pakistan today and the second question, what do they think should be done to address that problem? So two questions I'm looking at through a narrative lens. And first of all, let me just define this, what we mean by narratives and our company has a particular approach to this. I just want to share with you because this will be the prism through which, I guess it's our narrative in looking at these. So narratives as depicted on the slide, they are the stories that reflects a community's identity and experiences and oftentimes are used to explain its hopes, aspirations, fears. Now we look at master narratives as the deeply rooted cultural views that change very infrequently over time, that these are rooted in the cultural understandings and don't change much. And our company does some reports on these that we call master narratives. But we also have recognized that there are many beliefs that do change more frequently. We do see these as narratives and it's the change, the fluidity of these narratives that create space for political and social action. And so the tool we use to describe that is called narrative analytics, which is our approach to look at big data sources, in many cases and in this case, media data, large quantity of media data and then analyzes that to discern the narratives. So that's the approach we're using here. And so basically there are three steps to this approach. So I'll just share with you those steps and that's the methodology that I'll get into the findings. So the first thing we begin by mapping and clarifying the conversation, in this case, among the Pakistani public. We can look at other groups. We do this, we provide this product for corporations as well. And we can look at the views of their employees. So any kind of data set that we have access to, we can use to get this kind of information. And this data is all readily available. It's commercially available, we have to pay for it. It's a commodity, so this is not what you get. Maybe there's some other agencies that get this data through other means. But we do not avail ourselves of those services. This is all above board, standard open source engagement. And so we look at traditional media, blog networks and fora, and Twitter activity. We probably have a good profile on you right now too. You might even pop up in here. And so what we do is then you have this graphic here. And basically that's a cluster, that's a visualization of all these data entities put together. And then we try to identify what are the narratives at play. And so we have some proprietary tools that we use to do that. Then once we've identified the narratives, we play with them. We look at insights that the surface data tells us and try to kind of leverage those insights. And so we'll look at the volume of certain messages. We'll look at sharing. So with all your Twitter fans, Raza, and the degree to which they share and comment on your tweets. That's important because your influence is very important. Who are the key influencers? That's very important to know about these things. If you want to understand, navigate, and perhaps even influence the narrative landscape. There's some other factors. I won't get into all these. If you have questions, I'd be happy to. But together then we have basically a cumulative score, a composite score that measures the impact of different narratives in whatever organization or country we're talking about. And so then the third step is looking at this not just statically, but looking at this dynamically. So looking at how this changes over time. And we have an example here. This is just illustrative. It's not real. But let's just say that when Pakistanis look at the causes of terrorism in their country, you could theoretically, in fact you do, have some narratives that really blame the causes on outside factors. Blame it on the US, blame it on India, blame it on Al Qaeda. And then you have other narratives that blame it on internal factors. Misgovernance, the work of the security establishment, or other factors inside the state. And so if you just looked at that illustration over time, you could see how as the narratives change, fluctuate over time. You can then look at what happens in the real world. Was there an attack? Was there a government action? Was there some event that really triggered that change? And then you can attribute more causation around that. So what this does in comparison, say to polling data. Polling data is very powerful, but it's purely descriptive of what people think when you get that data. So this tool we find it's much more explanatory and offers deep insights as to why people believe what they believe. And where are the possibilities of them changing their minds? So, let me now get into the substance of our findings as we done this research on Pakistan. So we've gone in, and that is a map, it's a little weird. It's a visualization of the narrative landscape in Pakistan around violent extremism, okay? So we looked at many, many, a certain number, but many, many media sources. And we looked at these going back through 2013. So we did this over two years, about two years. And we looked at how these narratives changed over time. And through the media we identified, basically ate the more prominent narratives at play in the country. Now, we could, if we wanted to look at a certain subset. So if we wanted to look at this in the Pashtun media, for example, it would reveal a different pattern. This is entirely through the English media. So these are the newspapers that you may read or other media channels and blogs, all in English. So I want to caveat that our findings are of the English speaking sort of media elite in Pakistan on these issues. And so I'll explain these, but what you have here in the big blobs depict the dominance of certain narratives over other narratives. Okay, so I'll get into a little bit more detail of each of these. So we identified four prominent narratives when it comes to explaining why Pakistan is facing the terrorist threat it faces. And these are this cumulative weighting or the impact score. You can see two are really powerful to dominate the media landscape. And all of you are interested in this issue. Probably most of you spent a lot of time reading Pakistani media. So this will probably not come as a big surprise. There's some other cases where we are very surprised or our client is extremely surprised with the findings. Because there is a subjective lens through which we all view the media or other information in this big data quantitative lens sometimes reveals things that escape our biased approach. So basically the four narratives are first that conflict in Pakistan, political conflict, social conflict, is really driven by the Punjabi dominated government and elite. And they're mishandling and mistreatment of ethnic minorities in the country. And in the case of violent extremism, the sense is here that the grievances of these, particularly in Fata, but also elsewhere in Pashtun areas of Baluchistan. These grievances have been allowed to fester and they become a breeding ground for violent extremism. So this narrative really puts the blame at the doorstep of the Punjabi elite in the country. And you can see this is the composite score. That is the most prominent narrative we found in the Pakistan media over this period of time. The second most prominent one is that Pakistan is a victim of the US war on terror and it's 13 years of military operations in Afghanistan and that our activities in the region, drone use, other activities, have alienated Muslims and sparked tribal conflict in the region. And also created a condition where now the TTP and other militants can find safe haven in Afghanistan and are free to come across the border to attack Pakistan. So that's a very powerful narrative as well. The two other narratives that we identified are much less powerful. One is that the militants inside Pakistan were really created by the Pakistan Army and ISI and they were created for use as a foreign policy proxy against Afghanistan and India. And now the security establishment has lost control and that's why the problem is so big. And the other one is that what's very interesting, very low prominence. Although in government channels, this is very prominent. But in media channels, very, very low salience, is that the TTP may be indigenous in Pakistan, an indigenous problem. But the support provided by India and Afghanistan security agencies are what basically make this threat so big today. Okay, so that's the, these are the explanatory narratives inside Pakistan. And then when you look at the prescriptive narratives, we see four. And you'll see some connection here too. Again, the most prominent one is that in order to deal with this problem, you need a long term governmental campaign to improve education, raise living standards, enact de-radicalization measures, political and legal reforms, that's really what's required. Second one in terms of prominence is military crackdown. The military needs to get a lot tougher. This is a military, this is a problem of law and order and violence. And you can only deal with these violent extremists through violence and you need to wipe them out. And you also need also to use the new measures created by the 24th Amendment, the military courts and capital punishment. Less prominent is an Islamist narrative that violence will only be curbed when Pakistan adopts true Sharia law and rids the country of corrupt Western, perhaps, but anti-Islamist forces. And then also relatively small in the conversation in the media is that the way to deal with this is by negotiating with these militant groups, not by fighting them. Okay, so that's the descriptive narrative landscape in Pakistan from our study. So now let me just share with you eight insights and then turn it over to the other speakers who need to navigate this narrative landscape and I think what they're talking about. So the first again follows what I was talking about, the ethnic discontent of the country. It's a very, very powerful force. And when I reflect on what we in the US government, when I used to work in the government, how will you engage Pakistan? We had a total blind spot for this issue. This was something we did not engage in at all and partly because such a deeply sensitive internal political issue for any country, it's ethnic composition. But there is a very prominent view that terrorism is allowed to take place. If it's taking place outside, let's say the settled areas and particularly outside Punjab. If it's in Fata or Khyber Pakhtunwa, it's unfortunate, but it's allowed to happen. When it comes home to the heartland of the country, then it's unacceptable. And I think we've seen this and when the SWAT violence started deepening, really mainstream Pakistanis got up and demanded action much more so when violence was really dominating and totally overturning the political and social order in Western Pakistan. The second insight is that elites are more inward focused today than they have been in recent years. That they look at these, as I mentioned, the internal drivers or causes and they want their government to be accountable. It's a very strong narrative and a growing frustration in Pakistan that the government is not accountable and is not getting results in this area. A third insight is that what's interesting, this narrative that militants are a proxy of the Pakistan state. And you've heard other countries refer to this as state sponsored terrorism. That this has a very minimal impact in the media conversation. And there are probably a few reasons for that. One, it's a taboo subject. And you're aware of certain media personalities who have raised these issues. And have been dealt with pretty harshly by the security establishment. But whatever the causation or the attribution, the fact is this is not a very dominant theme in the media conversation in Pakistan today. A fourth insight that comes out of this is that the narrative landscape is changing. It's very dynamic. And Moeid already pointed to this earlier. Fully agree the data supports that. And what you see in the past are as more prominence of narratives that would blame the West or the United States for Pakistan's internal political or social problems. And now they're looking inward. The narrative landscape has shifted. And it's really seen either an opportunity or a need for Pakistan to deal with this issue. Largely because of the US drawdown in Afghanistan. So it really was focused externally has now become a more internally focused narrative. The fifth insight is that, it's really, and this surprised me, is but I probably should not be surprised with these media channels. And again, maybe looking at the more indigenous language, the Urdu language press, you would probably find a very different narrative. And that would be a really interesting study to compare these two. But in the English narrative, the Islamist view is not prominent. And in fact, there is a larger chorus of sentiment that is calling for more secular reforms moving away from Sharia and more to more secular government action. And in particular, after the terrible Peshawar school attack, that there is a growing tenor in the media debate accusing the radical clerics their narrative as being supportive or creating an intellectual environment where TTP can flourish. The sixth narrative is again that the specific institutional reforms are needed and there is a very a growing and more vibrant conversation about what these reforms should look like. Police and legal reforms, reforming the broader legal system, including police and courts, other kinds of reforms as well. And particularly a growing attention to the conditions that cause radicalization and the search for de-radicalization programs to address those causes at the roots. The seventh narrative, and again, this looks at the picture more dynamically over time, that you have, what's interesting here, the support for military responses, military crackdowns to the TTP and other violent extremists operating in Pakistan, fluctuates wildly over the years. It is like a roller coaster. And here in red is the narrative in support of media crackdown. In blue is the support for negotiation. So just taking two narratives and comparing them dynamically over time, in terms of how much prominence they have in the conversation. And what, and this only starts in the third quarter of 2013. As you would know, if you went back to 2003, the blue or the negotiations narrative would be much more prominent. The military crackdown, I think, probably insignificant at that period of time. So what you're looking at is just basically a two-year, most recent snapshot of how this trend has evolved. And what you're seeing is just a much greater support for military crackdown than for negotiations. Okay, the final insight that we have, and here we just have a snippet from one article in Daily Times, because I think it really put this out. And this is to nuance the point I just made before, where there's a growing tenor in support of military crackdown. What we see here also is that that is insufficient. It's a necessary condition, but an insufficient condition to deal with the problem. So that might be useful for the clearing, but for the holding and governing and developing, you need a whole series of government reforms and governance and economic development to deal with the problem. Okay, so those are our findings. Let me just tell you two, sort of three more methodological angles. As we do this kind of research things that we can look at, just so for your awareness, we can break down the segmentation. The great thing about data and why big data analytics is so popular, to the extent that that data is tagged with maybe demographic information, geographic information, media type, and other channels. You can then segment it and discern the trends across those categories, across those segments. And we do this for government and non-governmental clients. So you could theoretically look at, okay, what is the military in the blogs of serving or retired officers or soldiers? What is the narrative among them? Or you could look at it as narrow as MFA, or the government, or you could look at it PMLN versus PPP. So to the end, you could look at it in the Pushtun area, Pushtun belt, or in Sindh, or in Islamabad. So you can bound this. And then once you identify where those narratives are, cross, sort of pollinate them with those segments, you can really get interesting patterns. And let's just say if the government of Pakistan wants to take this issue more seriously, it would be very well informed to understand the narrative landscape at a nuanced level. I'm sure they get it at a gut reaction. I mean, the politicians, politicians intuitively understand this. But to do this a little bit more scientifically, it gives you a lot more traction on the problems. We sense our belief. And then the other thing you can look at is key influencers. There's certain people at certain times that will change the narrative landscape because their views for various reasons end up driving and influencing the views of others. Raza's a great example. I thought that's not your Twitter handle there, Raza, okay. And then finally, the other thing, if you take this approach or some other similar approach seriously, there's certain metrics that you can develop, and we do this for our clients, there's certain metrics you can develop that can help you understand how your own communication strategy or your own engagement strategy is working. How it has an impact on the narrative landscape. And we do that for companies that are trying to get into new markets. And government clients as well. And so this metrics dashboard enables you to then have a strategic tool to help you navigate the narrative landscape more effectively. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. This is fascinating and a lot to digest there. Thank you, Moit. Well, I will start with saying that Peter has actually set the right context for what I'm going to say, in particular, some of the kind of narratives that permeate Pakistani mindset regarding both militancy and extremism, and it's China's is in the country as well. So, you know, I'm at USIP for the past few months. What I have been doing is looking at some of these issues, and in particular, what has been the policy response of the Pakistani government and the various sections of the state. And my primary focus when I started my work was on the key policy document, the NISP, the internal security policy, which was approved almost a year ago and has been in under implementation since then. But then this unfortunate Peshawar attack took place and that also, you know, gave me some more insights into the kind of responses we are now seeing in Pakistan, both by the people as well as the state. And surely, as Moit mentioned at the start of this debate, that never has Pakistan appeared so determined and clear in fighting and combating the various manifestations of terrorism as it is perhaps now. And some of the data that Peter showed us kind of confirms that, particularly the trends in not negotiating with the terrorists, in taking firm and clear action against them. So in this context, what is also important is to remember that Pakistan's internal security is actually driven and linked to its perception of its external insecurity. Pakistan has been an insecure state since 1947 and it has that narrative, which is the official state-sponsored thesis about Pakistan's existence, that it came into being as an anomaly to India and India would be willing to dismember it or harm it or break it or lord over its decline. And sadly, 1971, that whole prophecy was partly fulfilled. It was not solely India's doing because Pakistani policies were much to be accounted for. But Indian intervention in 1971 to support the Bengali nationalism and the creation of Bangladesh has left a deep scar on the security framework of Pakistan and how the military views Pakistan's security. And that is what matters at the end of the day. And in that context, the India-centric security view then drives how the internal security has to be managed. And in part, this whole narrative of external forces at work, whether they are Indians or whether they are later in the, you know, more recently, the Americans is a kind of a national belief system. And, you know, it is very difficult to challenge that and undo that. It would require decades of very hard work because that is what the Pakistani textbook state. That is what the military doctrines say. That is what an ordinary Pakistani, you ask them and they would kind of confirm that, you know, India is the enemy and we are threatened. And therefore, all the, you know, militias that target India or vow to target India are sort of kosher. And that is where the problem of larger internal security emerges because if you have certain militias which are directed towards India and have direct or indirect support of the state, then it is very difficult to tackle the other militias that have emerged in the recent decades against the Pakistani state. And TTP is a prime example of that offshoot of the jihad infrastructure that has been in place for nearly three decades now. I'll quickly go to the policy sort of documents and frameworks that guide the counter-terrorism operations now. And it's also amazing that, you know, the issue of terrorism and civilian deaths and the horrific bomb blasts is not new. You know, only in the last five years, a thousand schools were blown up by the Taliban and that's data compiled by the Human Rights Watch. Over 50 Sufi shrines have been targeted in the last six years. There have been ghastly incidents against women and kids in Peshawar, in Lahore, in other parts of Kuwait, where civilians have been targeted. But the Peshawar school with that mass scale of brutal sort of murder of kids sort of changed the narrative and more so because it was an army school and a lot of kids there had relationships with the military officials, you know, either they were directly kids or somehow linked to that. So I think finally the realization dawned in the Pakistani policymakers that they have to do something and stand clear and appear to be firm and clear headed with view to the militancy challenge. The national internal security policy was drafted last year in 2013 and it was formally approved almost a year ago by the federal cabinet and since then it has been under implementation and it is also ironic that the previous civilian government did not even come up with a comprehensive policy document which would tackle the challenge of internal security. The approach was to outsource the whole range of security matters to the military, whether it was external or internal and with the election in 2013, which sent Mr. Nawaz Sharif to the PM House with a thumping majority was a kind of a beginning of a civilian assertion and Mr. Sharif before this policy also tried to change the way Pakistan's internal security was being managed and he created a new body at the cabinet level which would deal with the security matters and which would be chaired by the PM comprising all the military chiefs and the intelligence heads and later on this policy document came into being but somehow after its launch the government did not show the kind of commitment through resources and the necessary institutional measures that were required to implement that and in particular in the budget of 2013 and 2014 financial year there was no allocation whatsoever for for these special purpose counterterrorism operations and so the NISP remained kind of a resource starved policy framework for a long time until until this Peshawar incident and now with the announcement of the national action plan there has been a firm declaration by the government which intends to provide more resources to implement some of the key measures outlined in the second iteration of the security policy which is known as the national action plan or NAP it is a 20-point agenda which was announced by the Prime Minister almost 17 or 18 points are a regurgitation of the NISP that was earlier in place except two key items one is the establishment of the military courts and the second is the reintroduction of capital punishment to create deterrence and to sort of demonstrate that the state is serious about punishing those who perpetrate terrorism and thus far I think over 20 convicted terrorists have been hanged and hundreds are supposed to be hanged in the current year I think we'll see more of that that's that's partly to has to do with the with the kind of public mood the the kind of national opinion on vengeance and immediate action and there's a very split view on that but it's going to actually lead to the achievement of objectives under NAP so similarly there's a 21st constitutional amendment that was enacted by the parliament in early January and that amends both the Army Act and the Constitution and sets up military courts for speedy justice the narrative in Pakistan which was also kind of changed after Peshawar was that the failure of the judicial system was somehow the key cause for the rise of militancy and terror in Pakistan and that is partly true as well because Pakistan's courts are unable for various reasons you know for a very weak prosecutorial system for problems with police investigation and the security of judges and witnesses that only 2 to 3% of those charged with terrorism are actually punished or convicted the rest are either set free or languished in jails or there are jail breaks as you've seen there have been two or three major jail breaks releasing hundreds of militants through by force and the NAP sort of addresses that and there has been you know in the last two weeks immense progress on that particularly in the province of Punjab where for the first time in almost a decade the militant infrastructure in terms of seminaries training camps hate literature and publishing hate material have been cracked down dozens of clerics who preach hatred have been arrested these are new new developments in Pakistan you know we have been articulating that for almost a decade now saying do this do this and finally it seems that it is happening but there's a problem here the problem is that the civilian government is in place it tried to take charge of security it tried to rearrange the security architecture but it seems that you know either it has admitted to its failure or that the military has assumed the the driving seat position and so the army chief appears to be taking the lead which is okay with Pakistani public opinion by the way because the you know the civilian governments and political parties are either viewed as weak or soft on on the terrorists because they have been you know they had been advocating for a compromise with the Pakistani Taliban for long and secondly that the paradox of Pakistan is that the military is is viewed as the only viable institution that can deliver results while a lot of its security worldview is also paradoxically responsible for some of the mess that we are in today and that is the kind of a paradox which has continued for decades and it's an unresolved one and we'll see how this transforms the second problem with the implementation of the national action plan is that Pakistani constitution in the recent years has also undergone major shifts through constitutional amendments which have empowered the provinces and it is no longer the kind of centralized state that Pakistan say 10 or 20 years ago was over 100 and 10 functions purely belonging to the federal government were devolved to the provinces in 2010 2011 and 2012 the finances the federal taxes the bulk of share goes to the provinces and a lot of deradicalization measures whether they have to do with changing the of narratives improvement of education system police reform local government reform are purely provincial domains and the provinces have not been on board in both the formulation of NISP and to a great degree the national action plan although the national national action plan came through a consensus of consensus by the political parties but it was a kind of a centralized process which was then told to the provinces that you have to implement it how far they own it how far they're going to put in their own money remains to be seen and in the provincial management of internal security there's a there's also a dichotomy that is emerging which is that you know while the chief minister of a province is in charge of the home affair the internal security affairs the police the intelligence civilian in intelligence operations the so-called apex committees which are coordinating the implementation of national action plan are being led by the army chief so in January there were two meetings held in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces where the army chief was was leading these meetings and the chief ministers who are elected and in charge constitutionally mandated with the various functions they have to deliver were there as participants or senior distinguished participants or panelists so so there's a there's a bit of a anomaly there and because you have a civilian government you have a democratic order but in effect it is the military which is in the driving seat and implementing the national action plan I think that the third issue that is is going to impact the implementation of these counter terrorism measures and these policy frameworks and by the way these policy frameworks are just fine I mean you know they can be problems with certain formulation for or certain definitions but by large they address all the areas they talk about the radicalization that they talk about madrasas they talk about most reforms they talk about education improvement change in curricula police reforms prosecution reforms so you know there's a whole laundry list which is there so one cannot have a pick much born with these plans but the real question is whether these plans are owned by the provincial administrations whether they're going to give the resources whether they feel empowered enough to implement that or see that as a centralized dictar by the federal government and the military in particular and more importantly whether the external security parameters which define Pakistan's view of its insecurity are going to change and these are these are you know in summary related to the India and Afghanistan policy on Afghanistan we do see a shift with the military making a very direct effort to engage with the new Afghan government in building confidence in seeking their support to eliminate the TTP high doubts but on India it's all stalled it is stalled you know the diplomatic engagement broke down in August 2014 since then there have been no public official diplomatic talks of any level of any kind secondly the Indian Prime Minister has also you know to appease his own constituency has taken a hard line on Pakistan and Indian public opinion also does not seem very interested in engaging with Pakistan and in Pakistan you know that the the that there then there are very few advocates who really want the India policy to change so that's the dilemma that is going to impact because if the private militias that act as arms of Pakistan's security policy towards India remain in place they are going to support laterally or or or covertly the jihad infrastructure and Pakistan's action plan against terrorism cannot succeed if the jihad infrastructure is not unpacked undone and you know morph into something different and one last minute wait sorry for the stepping over but I and so I so this particular dilemma pervades the the larger internal security debate I think one final point that has to be made is that the the overt or the over emphasis on the Taliban whether they have gone or the Pakistan or the India centric militias is is well known here in Washington and elsewhere but actually the the crux of of the internal security challenge now is sectarian outfits that have grown in number in their power in their outreach and that are largely based out of Punjab but have now you know found new sanctuaries in Sindh province in Balochistan for various reasons and they provide not just the foot soldiers to the Pakistani Taliban but also drive the ideological agenda of the larger you know Sunni extremism in country and that requires a far more complex and delicate strategy to deal with and that is that is still largely underdressed because crackdowns are easy you can go and arrest 500 clerics shut down a few dozen madrasas and mosques you know confiscate hate hate materials but what do you do what what do you do next for that you have to have a larger internal discourse within Pakistani society and within the Islamic theological parameters and look at sources where within Islam that promote harmony and tolerance because at the moment it's it's it's it's a kind of a hotbed a time bomb that is ticking and what what needs to be done well basically I think there are three issues here the national NACTA which is the national national anti-terrorism counterterrorism authority is the leading or a Pakistani version of homeland security is the driver of these counterterrorism measures thus far it has not been funded despite so many years it has a very thin staffing expertise and many of the functions it is supposed to perform and most importantly of intelligence coordination between civil and military remain unimplemented and the Prime Minister has to is the leader of that the NACTA did not even meet for a whole year until this Peshawar tragedy happened and then the Prime Minister gave the orders for for its board to meet so it has to be given the due importance if you look at the example of Sri Lanka which combated private militias fighting fighting the state you know there was a far more engagement by the office of the Prime Minister in in leading the operations the second is resourcing which I've already mentioned and the third then comes to the kind of institutional arrangements that you need and for that without effective police reforms and local government reform and education reform all these action plans are would not be would not have long-term impact sadly thanks for the clearly I've not been a good moderator so far so I'm hoping for some self-regulation Mr. Hameed that's the disadvantage of speaking last I guess thank you I'll just briefly be talking about the approach that has been taken by the government in Pakistan and what are the merits to my mind and the demerits of that approach that in the recent initiatives and kind of the way forward I think because a big question that we wanted me to talk about was whether law enforcement can deliver whether it has delivered in the past and what needs to be done for that to happen in future so the initial reaction as Raza has briefly pointed out has been a post-Peshawar as there has been a 21st amendment in the Constitution which essentially what it does is that it has created jurisdiction for military courts in cases where there are special terrorism incidents and under the Protection of Pakistan Act which was passed last year and so that creates jurisdiction for special military tribunals but that only happens once a case is referred to these military courts by the federal government there has been a removal of the moratorium as I was already talking about the impact of that has been there has been this demand by all law enforcement agencies for a very long time that we keep talking about the judicial system or the you know legal system not delivering but there are hundreds and of people who are convicted terrorists so why are they not being punished that moratorium has now been removed and so people the executions have already started and this is just related to the cases of terrorism so what is the efficacy or otherwise of that I think that's debate that can theoretically that's fine but I think that happens even in the US and in other countries so in this case I think it has been kind of a special dispensation which I from a law enforcement point of view I think I would support that there are cases many of the jail breaks that have happened in the past very large part of the motivation was to spring these people out of these jails so I think it at least removes that kind of incentive from the prison and removes the pressure from there the national action plan the 20-point agenda that I was talking about you know the one point that keeps coming up again and again is that the military has taken a dominant role although there have been at least two you know all parties conferences one aspect that has been that has not been talked about is that there has been a very severe threat to schools in you know all over Pakistan schools remain closed for at least a month and you know every parent knows what kind of psychological impact that has on your children and your families when your schools are not open so now the schools have opened with enhanced security by years across Pakistan and those by years are still ongoing there are infrastructure improvement walls are going up CCTV all those kinds of payers that are even now going on and so I'll just be talking about the I think the merits and the de-marriage of these recent initiatives I think the biggest merit of this whole approach has been that it has a lot of signaling value I mean there has been a lot of criticism in the sense that you know the military is not doing this the military is not doing that or there has been lackluster law enforcement I think at least from a signaling point of view getting everyone on board the political forces as well as all of the law enforcement forces I think it has been a big plus at least in this case that everyone is on board and there has been an amendment in the Constitution which is through consensus so whatever is decided regarding the you know how this constitutional amendment goes because there already has been a legal challenge to it and the matter has now been taken up by the Supreme Court there is a hearing tomorrow in the Supreme Court so it's an open question whether the constitutional amendment remains but one important kind of caveat is that it is only for two years so that means that it has already a sunset clause built into it in the constitutional amendment as well as the amendment in the Army Act so the hope is that in the next two years if the military courts or the you know the special law that is being you know the protection of Pakistan ordinance if they have an impact you know then that means that hopefully by the end of those two years we would need these military courts anymore and we would revert back to our judicial system I mean that is the hope although you know I'll talk about the the demerit of that also the the second kind of big merit is that you know it institutes some process because the other option then is that you go out and resort to extra judicial killing which I think no one would advocate and that also has added disadvantage of kind of it does not have any legitimacy in the eyes of the whole society as well as the people who are involved so when you have some kind of a process however flawed you might think the process is I think that's better than having no process and resorting to kind of things that are outside of the law and in any case it adopts a legal and a constitutional mechanism and if the courts then decide that this mechanism is not constitutional obviously that legal challenge has already been sprung so there can be adjudication on that but for the time being you know this is how the state of the affairs is on ground so I think in terms of these there are these two big advantages as far as the issues the critics would point out about the you know the problems with this you know obviously the biggest kind of issue about this would be the whole legitimacy question so if there is no due process or if there is if the equal protection of laws is taken away then the you know the point of having a judicial system or a legal process is undermined which is that you know if this kind of a process does not have legitimacy in the eyes of the broader society then obviously that is a kind of a driver of extremism or terrorism so that is kind of a big criticism but that has to be addressed I think in the days to come the other kind of big criticism would be that you know this is a kind of a shortcut it's a cop-out we are not trying to address the larger issues of the judicial system or of the law enforcement system and those deficiencies are well documented everyone knows what those deficiencies are I'll be briefly talking about those as well and those are that in a in a in a legal system where which was primarily meant for essentially a rural kind of law enforcement in a rural society with the passage of time we have not been able to evolve that legal system we have not been able to kind of evolve it to a point where it could do adequate urban policing and adequate counter-terrorism functions we have not been able to do that so we are trying to use the same legal or judicial system to fight terrorism and I think it's kind of like asking a doctor to you know fight today's diseases with tools that are maybe a century and a half old so that is obviously a very big kind of handicap so in that sense if you do not address the larger issue of judicial system reform and law enforcement reform then naturally in the long run what happens after the two years so that is you know a big question mark in that sense the reaction of the superior courts obviously that remains to be seen so naturally that is an outstanding issue and another kind of big issue that I think we have to recognize is that military cannot you know fix all of these solutions and it's not kind of a Hercules that has the you know the whole burden of the earth on its shoulders it's cannot be the only institution that tries to solve all problems so you have to invest in civilian institutions you have to take care of the deficiencies that you identify and try and support this kind of anti-terrorism effort that is going on there has been some investment some effort towards that but you know not adequate so naturally that has to be a very big priority in terms of you know the future course of action as far as the I'm cognizant of the limited time so as far as the way forward is concerned I think we have to address these at least these three big issues which is the legitimacy question and so you have to build in I mean my kind of feeling or sense would be that the if the the matter goes as the matter has gone to the Supreme Court it might ask that some additional protections be built into the law as it stands today so if there are some you know due process and equal protection of law safeguards built into other court demands that they be built in into this law I think that would be a positive step that would probably be welcomed by almost everyone the second thing that needs to be fixed is a long-term kind of issues with the legal and the judicial system so you know myself and we had a discussion about the best approach towards counter-terrorism in Pakistan and we agreed that you know the kind of approach that Italy took in terms of the mafia when they had this huge issue in Sicily I think that would be the approach to be taken where you do not have effective witness protection programs and where your judicial system depends a lot on oral testimony of witnesses and that's how the law is then obviously there has to be a shift away from oral testimony towards forensic evidence and then there has to be a shift away from kind of open court trials towards trials where which protect the identity not only of the investigators but also of the prosecutors of the witnesses and of the judges themselves so I think that has to be done in days to come and I think there already has been some progress towards that witness protection programs are in at least in law now being built into the ATA law and as they are developed in days to come I think there would be a lot of progress towards that there are some you know difficult issues with regard to burden of proof the burden of proof as in all common law jurisdictions in Pakistan lies on the prosecution but people who have a law background know that you know there are strict liability kind of offenses also where you if and the US Supreme Court actually developed that law about a century ago and it has a very well developed law and in the case of narcotics Pakistan and other many other legal jurisdictions around the world have a very well-defined strict liability kind of jurisdiction which is that if narcotics are recovered you know the burden of proof shifts to the defense I think a similar kind of thing needs to be done especially in the case of explosives or suicide vests or those kinds of things that you know there have been cases where tons of explosives were recovered and unfortunately this because the burden of proof was on the prosecution those cases could not get conviction so I think that is a big step towards and there has been some movement at least in the protection of Pakistan act towards shifting that burden of proof in cases of recoveries of explosives and things like that then one very major kind of thing that needs to be done and I think being here in the US I would take this opportunity to highlight this is that the civilian law enforcement agencies have done a wonderful job in Pakistan that has not been recognized widely when you look at all of the major cases that have happened and when you look back at least at the things that were happening in Pakistan in 2009 and 10 you see a marked change today you look at the number of incidents that has gone down you look at the places which had been taken over it's partly because of the military operations in swat and viziristan but a large part of that contribution was made by the civilian law enforcement agencies and a lot of good work which was a lot of good policing work and a lot of intelligence led police work that has resulted in a lot of people being caught and punished in courts so I think that needs to be recognized and there has to be a lot of investment in the counter terrorism department that has been now set up in Punjab it is now being set up in Sindh it has already been set up in Balochistan and KPK so a lot of investment needs to go towards that side in order to support the you know law enforcement anti-terror function on an ongoing basis it cannot be a one-off kind of thing and then you leave it at that and that can only happen if it is done on a consistent day-to-day basis through regular law enforcement agencies and you cannot have vacuums like FATA or Balochistan's B area where you do not have regular law enforcement because that vacuum then leads to terrorist sanctuaries that cannot be allowed to happen so I think these are two big kind of you know things that need to be done in days to come and I think the other Raza has already talked about investing in NACTA and more and better intelligence coordination and other than that there are broader issues of mainstreaming and you know curriculum reform I would not talk about that here because you know that's not my area of expertise but my kind of you know the message is that you know a lot of good work has already been done these institutions have already delivered I will look at the situation now and when you compare it with the Middle East what has the complete meltdown of many institutions that you see around the Middle East you compare that with a challenge that was there in Pakistan four five six years ago you compare it with today so it's not really that bad a situation but obviously going from here on I think the things that I have talked about need to be taken care of thank you thank you thanks a lot for making up for my bad performance let me my punishment is that I'm not going to take the prerogative to ask any questions let me open it up to all you and and see if you have questions to any of our panelists and if we can keep the questions very short again to make up for my bad performance let's let's start from here if we can the one behind you we'll start from that ladies first thank you very much for this presentation I'm Elaine Seraio and I really enjoyed starting off with the diagrams presented by Dr. Peter Levoix reminds me of Manel Broats the clusters that is what I'd like to ask is where do we see now the intersection between the kind of narrative from master narrative that you described Dr. Levoix to the clustering that we saw from from the databases and that intersecting with what Mr. Rumi has addressed in terms of the cultural developments and movements and attitudes in Pakistan in other words the capacity that we've unfortunately seen I think even the Pakistanis feel that the capacity for maybe denying the situations over the years and now has come to such a head as we've recently seen in Peshawah how do you see this going forward with beyond these particular two of the particular government actions of NAP which is indeed significant but we've seen sort of significant things said and done in the past and they've sort of petered out so where do you gentlemen see this all going and that would also include Mr. Hamid because I think his point about the civilian role is incredibly important thank you thanks let's collect two or three and then then we can we can have answers can we go here thank you very much all panelists for the good points that you I'm Sabratullah at Georgetown University I'm from Afghanistan if we look to the history of the tribal areas federally administered tribal areas I'm really surprised that still in the Pakistani narrative I do not see the very basic issue to be addressed all the narrative that came after the Peshawar incident is more symptomatic treatment narrative judicial authority given jurisdiction given to military and all that but if we look to the history of Fata in 60s we see the problem in SWAT in 70s we see problem in South Uzairistan agency the military operations South Uzairistan agency was bombed by fighter jets Maulana Norma Ahmad was sent to prison then in 90s we see again the Muhammad agency and SWAT problem the Tariq Taliban of Pakistan looks kind of continuation of all that issue and if we look deeper into this status of the federally administered tribal area is probably one of the several factors and I'm not seeing that being addressed in the Pakistani narrative of the story this is one thing second thing is that can we just take one because we have a lot of hands and thank you thank you so much Marvin I'm Marvin why about Middle East Institute Peter I'm nonplussed by your major finding here about ethnic differences here being the major narrative why well for one thing any Punjab feeling predates anything that we've seen here within extremism in fact perhaps it was stronger in the past most of the people who are the voices in the Twitters and the newspapers which are mainly Punjab most of your data comes from Punjab the Punjab more than that the reflection of those ethnic differences here certainly it's hard to imagine that they are reflecting the views of Blucz nationalists nationalists or Cindy nationalists it's there's something here that just doesn't ring correctly and I for example if we're if they're reflecting the the TTP and the origins of the TTP well the TTP's actions are mainly against Pashtuns they're not against they're not directed against Punjabis and the fear here of the of the Swaraki southern Punjabs is they're already Punjabi having said all that one further thought what's if you had asked me what I thought would be the major narrative and it doesn't appear at all in your findings is the government's policies is it possible that what you got really is reflection on government policies where the government is viewed as Punjabi dominated right Raza you want to start okay very quickly I think I'll I just want to respond to the issue that Marvin's also raised which is that I think the ethnic perceptions are do matter a lot in this whole narrative I mean Pakistan's militancy is so ahead of it it's not just the Taliban or it's not just the sectarian groups but you know there is political violence in Karachi there is Baloch insurgency in Balochistan there is growing you know small-scale Cindy sort of movement as well and so all of this flows from this from the perceptions of Punjab being the dominant province of having appropriated the national resources and having sort of forced its policy framework particularly the security policy worldview onto the smaller provinces and it is also a historical reality that Pakistan's three smaller provinces are far less anti-india than the Punjabis and Punjab is the dominant province. Cindy's Baloch and the Pakhtuns have always had a different view on that and I think on on this issue of things featuring out well that is the real issue here that General Musharraf announced identical points in 2002 and 2003 if you read his speeches and I was going through them he took the same line and there was action taken within the first few years and then it all faded why I mean this is a larger question and on narratives I think Peter I would like to make a comment on which you also mentioned that you know the Urdu media or the vernacular media in Pakistan is what drives the public opinion it is xerophobic jingoistic anti-west and has been supporting the militants and one example of that is that when the when the Pakistan army raided actually started operation in north desertistan in one of the hideouts where the TTP bombers were being trained they found copies of major Urdu columns that have been promoting the Taliban cause for a decade. Thanks Peter. Thank you for those comments and questions so Marvin if you saw everything in my brief is totally unsurprising then I'd be disappointed so I'm glad you found something to try because I was trying to control the Marvin Wang bomb bias in Washington's understanding of these events but but more seriously I would have expected the ethnic dimension to be much less prominent than I sought to because for the same reason I mean I I read those columnists we're familiar with the same thing most of them are Punjabi most of them are Punjabi Sunni most of them are the dominant sort of demographic of the country and yet this came out as a very I think startling finding that there is an ethnic dimension in much of the conversation and I think probably when I would read these things my bias because having been to Pakistan you know for so long over the last couple of decades I tended to assume these are the fundamental realities they do date back to decades actually you know much longer than decades even before independent Pakistan and so we take these for granted so we don't see them but when you let the kind of data speak for itself and not us kind of coloring our interpretation it really jumps out much more prominently I'll just know whenever I go to give a talk at Qaidi Alizm or some university and you know the students in Pakistan the thing that jumps out of me and where the real emotion real frustration and grievance is on ethnic mistreatment more than any other issue so I think it's there and I think we've grown immune to this over time so just just a reaction and I do think it is it did predate this violence but I think there is a very legitimate now here's my personal view my it's a very legitimate concern that push dunes and blütsch and others should be raising that the dominant forces and the government and the security establishment allow the violence and do not resource the problem as actively and somehow and often perpetuate the problem when it's in the margins of the country not in the core of the country and I think that behavior over time is largely why we have these problems I mean I and going to the gentleman from Afghanistan's point on Fata I think personally the decades of mismanagement of the tribal areas in Pakistan this is if I had to attribute one prominent cause to the problems we have I would I would lay it at the doorsteps of that government neglect and mistreatment and mismanagement of the tribal areas final point on the vernacular media I think is is such a strong point when I was in Lahore studying Urdu I would be reading the Urdu media that also read Friday Times I don't know what you call that that's not even the normal mainstream that's a little bit but I love Friday Times and it's two different Pakistan's and and there are you know so I think I would have fully acknowledged there is a this is one view that's a narrative of one segment of Pakistani elite but there are many other packet stands and and to get to the young woman's point on the future you really do need to reconcile these different viewpoints to get a political base for action going forward I think all of the recommendations that both my colleagues identified they're all the right things that need to be done but if you don't have a political base for support how can you sustain that progress and going back to Sivgatullah's point I would point out Sivgatullah that this issue with Fata is not just with 60s and 70s it actually goes back to 1840s and 1860s so you when you keep looking at historical records every 10 years or 15 years you would have a even the British have find that British would be sending a punitive column to know now to Kala Dhaka or now to Bazaaristan and then you had Fakir of Ippi and then you had Churchill fighting in Malakand all of those things so it's not as if it's a very recent phenomenon or it's just in the 60s or the 70s so the area obviously because of the under development and it's you know it's it's a mountainous area it's difficult to develop and I would agree with Peter that it has not been well developed it has not been well integrated and what you're talking about you are absolutely right it is symptomatic treatment but when you're talking about law enforcement I mean that is what you do as far as and good law enforcement cannot go without good kind of nation building so you need to develop good infrastructure you need to develop a policy where you can integrate it into the mainstream and the mainstreaming into the legal system into the administrative system of Pakistan I think that's that would be a big step forward for Fata. Thank you we'll take one more round and then unfortunately we'll have to close and there are way too many hands the lady here short please okay it's Nazrana I'm from Bakhtunkhwa thank you very much Raza and everyone my question is there I was just reading reports today which are coming from Peshawar and teachers there government of Bakhtunkhwa is giving training to teachers including female teachers to operate guns yeah right so this this we have done in the past as well right we have armed Amun Lashkar's to do that to to fight Taliban and in the last one year or two years time we have seen that 500 Amun Lashkar members have been killed by the Taliban so are we putting our teachers on the front fair enough good question all the way in the back sorry I know there are too many hands I just have to hi my name is Sayed Nazir Afridi I'm Humphrey Phil from tribal areas of Pakistan I'm a journalist I'm displaced by the conflict I'm living in Peshawar my family live in Peshawar so I think the hanging of terrorists is not a solution to the problem because they are not afraid of death and there should be some permanent solution and my question to Raza Rumi is that in presence of army courts what do you think that it would not be used against the Baloch nationalist and it would not be used against the missing persons who the army was reluctant to produce them in the civil courts so I'm afraid of that it will it will be used against them okay gentleman there and we'll end with that have the panelists speak and I promise to hold them to fire if they leave before answering everybody else's questions hi Doug Brooks with the afghan-american chamber of commerce and I guess my question would be with Dr. Afghani's visit to Pakistan or the Pakistani seeing Afghanistan in a different way and possibly as a partner in taking on these issues okay start from there and then going back to the possibility of abuse of military courts that you know that problem has I've identified that there is a possibility I mean at least it has been highlighted by several people in the press and those kinds of things the and it's because of that that during the debates in the assembly the you know they're built in a an additional kind of protection that the military courts would only take up cases which were referred to them by the federal government and secondly they also you know built a proviso into the language of the constitutional amendment itself which said that you know it could not be used against political parties or political groups only against terrorism and those kinds of things having said that and it also has a sunset clause of two years having said that you know this is a legitimate concern obviously the Supreme Court would also grapple with it and I think if they think that this language is too over broad then they can obviously direct the government to come up with a different language and maybe amend it or whatever so that I think is there is a kind of a solution within the system I think thank you I would just say maybe to summarize I mean obviously this problem is so big and it is just so devastating to I mean each one of you some of you have experienced displaced people having to be basically in the United States now and not back in your homeland because of these problems so far be it from me to try to tell you about the gravity of this problem you all experience this personally and probably everybody in this room has friends and family that have also experienced violence in Pakistan or terrorist violence elsewhere so I think recognizing the seriousness of the problem and the urgency of solving the problem is the first step and I think you know what I would just reflect the narrative landscape is shifting in Pakistan to do that that is necessary for action but it's insufficient I mean you do need the government to take serious action you need the civilians and the military to become aligned and work together as opposed to cross purposes and you need the central government to work with the provinces and the tribal areas in a coordinated manner and there are many specific measures and I think the judicial and police reforms educational reforms etc that are absolutely essential but you can't do that unless you get the team operating as one and I think this is something where the U.S. the last other countries we should really galvanize our support to try to influence these outcomes and resource these outcomes because Pakistan the other problem it's broke and a lot of these measures do take resources to do them I would just say one thing and I just really want to end by complimenting Moid for putting on this panel I think more dialogues like this that we can really grapple with these issues and help and you should all and what USIP does so well is help US Congress and US administration and our and our elite and media elite in our country to understand these issues put a little more pressure on our government to take action to put a little more pressure on the Pakistan and other governments to take action I think is is absolutely the right thing so I want to thank you thanks I also just final point I want to say to to Raza I think it is the security is again my personal view the security establishment in Pakistan does have too cozy an alliance with militant groups in that country this is a pattern over time look the US has done that in other parts of the world we did it in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen we now have understood the problems of that policy and we're trying to you know we've changed our ways Pakistan still faces an excruciating security problem in the military just does not have the self-confidence to do this so I would say more broadly there is a regional strategic angle here too and I do suspect this is something that President Obama was talking to Prime Minister Modi about so hopefully India Afghanistan and Pakistan and others can help address the security problem thank you Peter also for the for the additional points I'm a bit outraged because you know in I'm a Punjabi and we consider the army army Islam and Pakistan as the same things so whenever there's a critique of security it's establishment the Pakistani nationalism gets a bit jolted so anyway that was a light about but I think I would like to the issue of Fata was raised and the long-term multiple jurisdictions in Pakistan was also raised I think deep down the problem is that the citizen-state relationship in Pakistan remains fractured and fragmented nearly half of Pakistan's territory is governed or is an ungoverned place space whether it's Fata parts of Balochistan South Punjab even Karachi and parts of Khabib Pakhtunkhwa you don't have courts you don't have police you don't have the regular administrative apparatus and these are being governed by the 19th century frameworks which the British left I think part of that is a is a is a completely unjust debate the second issue that I would like to raise is is about the media and I would like to point out that there's one colleague of ours here in the third of the fourth row who took out the only liberal Urdu paper and you know a few months ago there was a mob which said that you've committed blasphemy and he was about to be charged with that which meant which means murder and he had to escape and flee to the US so this is the dire situation about the narratives that is where I think the most important investment needs to be done I at the the results of your work are extremely impressive and I hope that they're they inform the policymakers as well and they're more Pakistani outfits doing that for vernacular media because this is a war of narratives and opinions and and perceptions but thank you very much let me just take one minute and and end on a on a provocative note by throwing out some things that I think we didn't touch upon or touched upon but have an answer and may want to do in the future and and then we'll thank our panelists one we've talked about narratives but quite honestly how do raza you bring up narratives from within the religious space that are moderate when every single moderate religious cleric is taken down before anybody else that's one second Peter you've talked about narratives here what about state created narratives I think that's an important thing that is overlooked often I think the Pakistani state has been fairly good where it's wanted swath being one example and others so what about that how does that sort of fit into this third on narratives can the US do anything or is the only approach going to be do not do no harm because it's such a sensitive issue I think these are things that that we need to look at ethnic discontent you know one hears of this I've grown up in Pakistan hearing this the question we need to answer is number one what do you do about it because I suspect it's more than just putting more non-panjabis in key positions we've had that it that doesn't work is it about the makeup of the federation and the provinces and the sizes is it something to do with that or do we have to look elsewhere second you know I think we need to look more critically at this whole idea of Punjabi speaking as Punjabis because they've been a majority actually Punjabi nationalism doesn't exist nearly to the extent that other provinces do so the the institution that we blame for sort of having dominated this Punjabiization is the only institution I know who actually doesn't think ethnically which is the military in some way so so I think we need to think more more you know on what Punjabi nationalism actually means and finally the last two things one I think analysts like me and others have been fairly unfair when we talk about use of four option use of force options because there's a sense of excitement when when we ask a country or when we see a country go after terrorists with force and then as soon as they go after them with force there is all this criticism about too much force and the wrong kind of force and it shouldn't be done so I think we need to think more about what does use of force mean what kind of use of force is okay where and where where it's not and I don't think we've done enough to sort of think through this and and finally I think there's sort of million-dollar question Raza is this larger strategic space that Peter has also mentioned and and all of you have I think the question is where do you find the real indicators and signs of things changing because even if Pakistan were to sort of completely change its ways I for one would not see Pakistan going after all these groups simultaneously so how do you actually craft a policy that is sequential but you also are clear that it's a policy that's a that's a divorce from the past I think that's really the analytical question to answer thank you all of you for coming I'm sorry for going over time but please join me in thanking the panelists