Pakistan’s recently launched National Security Policy (NSP) has altered the traditional notion of security in the country by marking a significant paradigm shift in the existing concept of national security. The shifting of focus from the narrow definition of security to the broader concept of security has sparked a new debate where people from different academic and policymaking circles have started espousing different explanations from the new concept of national security. This new concept is broadly considered an upgradation of traditional values of the national security mechanism in Pakistan because the 48 paged public document of the NSP consisting of eight brief sections attempts to provide a glimpse of the government’s broader national security planning. Thus, the launching of the NSP on January 14, 2022 delivered a new way for the government to address the mainstream security challenges to the nation. The public version is described as a citizen-centric policy framework, placing economic security at its core in hopes to improve trade ties with its neighbours, especially with India. In contrast to the efforts of previous governments, the architects of NSP have endeavored to provide an integrated concept of security targeting a wide range of threats originating from internal and external environments. Not surprisingly the declassified public version of the NSP has generated a healthy debate across the country due to its various unique characteristics.
1. It is formally called the first Comprehensive National Security Policy of Pakistan due to its greater emphasis on the concept of human security. The integration of different elements of human security in the NSP has formalized Islamabad’s vision of bringing security issues of traditional and nontraditional nature together.
2. This policy is an inclusive approach for balancing the traditional and nontraditional concepts of security, enabling the government to widen the scope of its traditional framework for responding to prevailing security issues from the domestic, regional, and international environments.
3. The actual focus of the public document of NSP makes it exceptional due to its citizen-centric approach. In its initial pages the document mentions that the adaptation of a citizen-centric approach has facilitated the government of Pakistan to prioritize the values of national cohesion and the prosperity of citizens over other issues.
4. Through prioritizing the wellbeing of the citizens, Pakistan’s leadership has signalled its main objectives for promoting and implementing the concept of an Islamic welfare state. While keeping in mind the concept of an Islamic welfare state, the government of Pakistan has tried to introduce a policy of economic security, which could be helpful in ensuring human welfare for the establishment of a prosperous society based on Islamic lines.
5. Apart from emphasizing various dimensions of security, the most important part of the NSP is associated with the idea of security depending on the economic and social wellbeing of citizens. That is why its fundamental focus is on the citizens’ safety, security and dignity. Regarding economic development, the main structure of the NSP places economic security at the core of the comprehensive national security mechanism.
6. The most important aspect of the NSP is the unanimous stance of the nation on a single agenda as the government has involved different segments of society in the formulation of NSP. In the consultation process, comprehensive feedback from the Advisory Board of National Security Division (NSD) was quite helpful, parallel to collecting the inputs of leading academic institutions, mainstream think tanks, and religious scholars. These steps were significant in developing a consensus on national security issues.
7. The most important and exceptional feature of the NSP is the role of civil society including university graduates who expressed their view/thoughts in the formulation of NSP, which was considered an essential element for defining a united stance of the whole nation on the concept of national security.
Apart from having all these unique characteristics, the NSP document was formulated after a series of consultations and meetings with Federal Ministers, Chief Ministers, and the governments of Gilgit–Baltistan and Azam Jammu and Kashmir. After having several series of consultations with different sections of society beyond their political, ethnic, and ideological division, the process of policy formulation took seven years for identifying the major security challenges to the nation, and suggesting effective measures for overcoming these challenges through crafting various opportunities. Thus, the main framework of the policy is divided into eight sections, and every section covers a different dimension of national security. The first section highlights the process of policy formulation. It recommends a five-year period for implementing the main agenda of the NSP with regular annual reviews. The second section highlights the national security framework, which provides the conceptual clarity of Pakistan’s vision of national security. It also defines the core principles for formulating and implementing the main principles of policy. The third section focuses on the concept of national cohesion while economic security has been discussed in the fourth section. The fifth and sixth sections emphasize upon the external and internal security challenges generally, whereas the seventh chapter underlines the challenges of foreign policy. The eighth and last section talks about the idea of human security due to the unavoidable and unstoppable effects of the pandemic on the nation before concluding the whole framework of NSP in the end. Besides the initial two sections providing the fundamental understandings of Islamabad’s greater national security mechanism, the subsequent sections of the NSP document have divided their points into ‘opportunities and challenges’ and ‘policy guidelines.’
A brief analytical overview of the NSP document slightly touched every aspect of security and its relevance to contemporary Pakistan. While providing a glimpse of Islamabad’s preferences for dealing with major security issues, the architectures of NSP have invested their full potential to cover every dimension of security, whether it is traditional or non-traditional, without mentioning a roadmap for its practical application. On rational grounds, the appropriate application of NSP seems a challenging task for the government because the public version of the NSP document portrays a different picture of reality. Without having adequate economic resources and a strong political will, it is difficult to manage the national security issues of Pakistan under the guidelines given in the NSP. Therefore, it is more appropriate to maintain that the implementation of the newly crafted national security mechanism of the current government seems a theoretical plan which might be difficult to integrate with reality. Analogous to various other security plans of Islamabad, the architects of this NSP would do well to learn the lessons from previous security plans of the country, which have remained largely ineffective in achieving desired results. The real challenge will be to match intent with action.
