Terrorism in Karachi down by 80%: Nisar

Opposition members of Sindh Assembly raising slogans in front of the speaker's chair over Rangers' powers issue during the assembly session in Karachi on Friday.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has said there had been an 80 per cent decline in acts of terrorism in Karachi since the start of the operation on September 5, 2013. He said considerable reduction in the occurrence of other crimes including target killings (53%), murders (30%) and robberies (35%) had been witnessed. The minister said no foreign agency was allowed to carry out activities in the country and there was no agent of Blackwater in the federal capital.
"Neither is any Blackwater agent present in Islamabad nor is any foreign agency allowed to operate in the country," the minister, while laying a report in the National Assembly on 'Achievements of the Ministry of Interior', said. He said foreign agencies had been stopped from working in Pakistan.
Chaudhry Nisar said the security audit of all the houses in Islamabad had been conducted and difficulties were faced in the case of around 400 houses where it was not known who was occupying these buildings. "I want to tell you that we know the data of each and every house in Islamabad," he said.
He maintained that no local agency in Pakistan was allowed to work with any foreign agency. He said the licences of local private security agencies working with foreign agencies had also been cancelled.
The minister admitted that the Joint Intelligence Directorate was yet to be established but there had been significant progress on security matters. "Security reports have also been shared between agencies and with the provinces which also resulted in some important operations," he said.
He pointed out that there had been considerable improvement in coordination between the federal intelligence agencies with the provinces, particularly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh. However, he said the war against terror was not over, adding the terrorists had been marginalised and they could try to undertake desperate sabotage acts. "They have been made to run across the border but still they have not been eliminated," he said.
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