The True Content Of Pakistan's New National Security Policy Has Been Kept Hidden

Senior journalist and TFT editor Najam Sethi has suggested various ways in which Pakistan's National Security Policy should be formulated. In his weekly editorial today, he said that the NSP has to be fashioned to withstand the loss of American aid and goodwill; to restore representative and credible legitimacy to the political system; and to step back from perennial conflict with India over Kashmir.

"The trillion dollar question is how. Only a massive transfer of wealth from the super-rich rentier classes to the poor, and a return to a representative civilian system of governance, will stem the rising economic and political discontent and religious militancy that threatens to overwhelm the state; only a prolonged period of peace with India and a profound retreat from militarism will yield the required space in which to accomplish this task. But any overnight attempt to stand the old National Security Policy on its head may unleash a formidable backlash from vested stakeholders among the institutions, groups and classes that have benefited from it for seven decades," he wrote.

Sethi went on to say that this is the reason why the new National Security Policy is top secret -- full of jargon and generalities. The true content and challenges have been obscured in the public version of the document, he wrote.