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Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency PILDAT is an independent, non-partisan and not-for-profit indigenous research and training institution with the mission to strengthen democracy and democratic institutions in Pakistan. PILDAT is a registered non-profit entity under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860, Pakistan. Copyright © Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency - PILDAT All Rights Reserved Printed in Pakistan Published: December 2019 ISBN: 978-969-558-747-8 Any part of this publication can be used or cited with a clear reference to PILDAT. Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development And Transparency Islamabad Office: P. O. Box 278, F-8, Postal Code: 44220, Islamabad, Pakistan Lahore Office: P. O. Box 11098, L.C.C.H.S, Postal Code: 54792, Lahore, Pakistan E-mail: [email protected] | Website: www.pildat.org P I L D AT Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 CONTENTS Preface 05 Executive Summary 06 Background 08 Meetings of the National Security Committee 09 State of Inter-Institutional Relations 11 Recommendations 16 List of Tables and Figures Figure 1: PM-COAS Interactions during August 18, 2018 – August 17, 2019 13 Figure 2: Interactions between PM and COAS 13 Figure 3: Comparison of Premier-COAS Interactions during First Years in Office 13 P I L D AT Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 PREFACEACE Performance of National Security Committee – An Overview is a performance analysis of the National Security Committee (NSC) during 2018-2019, to record and analyse the process of decision-making on national security issues in Pakistan. While PILDAT has previously carried out annual and periodic performance assessments of NSC and similar forums in earlier tenures of successive elected Federal Governments, this report assesses performance of the NSC during the first year of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Federal Government elected after the 11th General Election in 2018. The report, therefore, is looking at the period of performance between August 18, 2018 to August 17, 2019. The report closely examines publicly available data and reports in the media regarding the meetings of the National Security Committee and similar structures. The report also records key interactions between the elected civilian leadership with the military leadership during the year and is prepared as part of PILDAT's larger focus on promoting a Constitutional equation of inter-institutional relations in Pakistan. Disclaimer PILDAT team has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the contents of this report and do not accept responsibility for any omission and error, as it is not deliberate. September 2019 05 P I L D AT Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 EXECUTIVE SUMMAR SUMMARY Y A performance assessment of the National Security Committee during August 2018-2019 shows that while the NSC meetings were convened for a total of 6 times during the first year of Prime Minister, Mr. Imran Khan, in office, its pro- activity as a forum of regular consultation on national security agenda has not improved. As witnessed during previous years, the NSC meetings were convened only in response to crises and not on weekly basis as is the practice in established democracies with similar forums. When compared with the number of NSC meetings convened by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during his first year in office, 2013-2014, when NSC was formed and met 3 times, twice as many NSC meetings were convened by Prime Minister Imran Khan during his first year in office. On August 22, 2013, the elected Federal Government led by the PML-N established and notified the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS) to “focus on the national security agenda with the aim to formulate a national security policy that will become the guiding framework for its subsidiary policies – defence policy, foreign policy, internal security policy, and other policies affecting national security.”1 The PML-N Government also notified the setting up of a new National Security Division (NSD) to serve as the secretariat of the Committee. The CCNS was to be chaired by the prime minister and include as members the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defence, Interior and Finance, and the top military leadership including the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chiefs of Staff of Pakistan Army, Navy and Air Force. The CCNS had no independent secretariat, staff or support infrastructure. The nomenclature of the CCNS was later changed to the National Security Committee (NSC), which, under Prime Minister Sharif, was also converted into a 'decision-making body on national security' and not a consultative forum as it was originally conceived and as it exists in other democracies. The NSC was fashioned after National Security Councils that exist in other countries including the USA, UK, Israel, and Turkey, among others, and serve as consultation bodies chaired by elected heads of government to advise them on each country's national security agenda. These councils meet, in most cases, on a weekly basis and do not always include services chiefs as members. However, despite itself creating the much-needed forum to focus on the national security agenda with the aim to formulate a national security policy, the Nawaz Sharif led government kept the NSC largely dormant. During Mr. Nawaz Sharif's four-year stint as Prime Minister, he only convened NSC meetings for a total of 9 times. While the number of its meetings improved to 14 times during the 10-month premiership of Mr. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the NSC meetings were essentially convened to address a particular crisis issue at a time and were not held regularly. Twice, in February 2019 and August 2019, meetings of the NSC were called within a week of the prior meeting in apparent emergencies; both to discuss rising tensions with the neighbouring India. While it is admirable to use the Committee to show a united civil-military front on issues of national importance, it can adopt a more systematic approach to deliberate on national security agenda through the forum. The creation of the NSC provided a crucial forum of consultation on national security issues between the civil and the military leadership, which owing to peculiar history of Pakistan, do not always see eye to eye on important national issues. However, perhaps the dormancy of the NSC or the PML-N government's lack of focus in making it an institutional forum on consultation between civil and military also resulted in the forum being unable to play a role in improving relationship between the elected civilian government of the PML-N and the successive military leadership. Despite a slight improvement in number and frequency of NSC meetings during the first year of Prime Minister Khan's government, no serious effort appears to have been made by the Federal Government in activating and effectively using the NSC in institutionalising regular consultation and decision-making on national security agenda, especially the issues of strategic importance. Whereas unlike Mr. Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister Imran Khan regularly convenes federal cabinet meetings, same frequency and focus is absent from activating the NSC. 1. Dawn.com, [Website], 2013, DCC to be reconstituted as Committee on National Security https://www.dawn.com/news/1037613 (accessed September 25, 2019). 06 P I L D AT Performance of the National Security Committee An Overview August 2018 - August 2019 The most crucial casualty of successive elected governments' failure in making the NSC pro-active is the absence of a comprehensive national security policy in Pakistan which was to serve as a 'guiding framework for subsidiary policies of defence, foreign affairs and, internal security policies.' Successive civilian elected governments, major political parties and politicians on the whole are classically chided by the military for their perceived inability and perhaps even lack of competence and focus on creation of comprehensive policies. As an organised institution where relatively more focus is played on reading, writing and scholarship, the military mindset generally perceives politics in Pakistan as disorganised and devoid of attention on crucial issues of democratic governance that require effective policy making and implementation. Military personnel, both retired and serving, often point to the inability of successive elected governments in preparing a national security policy based on which Pakistan's defence policy should be made. It is the absence of a comprehensive national security policy that forces military to devise its own defence policy, they argue, pointing to a space ceded by elected governments that military is forced to fill on its own. Aside from the increasingly institutionalised ascendancy of military in politics of Pakistan, the perspective offered in this case rings true as Pakistan functions without a national security policy even in its 72nd year since formation. Even though the NSC meetings were only convened by Prime Minister Khan 6 times during his first year in office, he has met and interacted with Chief of Army Staff a total of 41 times between August 18, 2019 to August 17, 2019. The lack of focus on institutionalising the relationship between the elected political government and the military leadership is also reflected by the fact that Federal Minister for Defence, Mr. Pervaiz Khattak, was present in only 13 or 32% of the 41 meetings held between Mr. Imran Khan and General Qamar Javed Bajwa in the first year. This pattern of personalised interaction between successive Prime Ministers and Chiefs of the Army Staff was not much different during the first year of former Prime Minister, Mr.

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