Second inter-agency meeting on Monday reviewed challenges and threats posed by the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in present environment and identified them as the "cheapest assassins".The Chief of General Staff (CGS) Lieutenant General Rashid Mahmood headed the meeting held at the General Headquarters.

Counter Improvised Explosive Devices (CIED) policy and strategy were discussed in detail with stress on the growing challenges that include increasing rate of causalities. The meeting observed that the biggest regional challenge Pakistan faces today is to not only mitigate the effects but also to increase awareness in general public across the country so as to prevent them from becoming a part of this menace, unwittingly.

The meeting stressed to pursue Counter Improvised Explosive Devices (CIED) strategy in an aggressive manner and identification of grey areas and cultivation of a way forward for pursuing the policy has been regarded as the most significant step in this regard.It is pertinent to mention here that IEDs were referred as the weapons of choice that required a ‘whole-of-nation’ approached to be countered. The Pakistan Army is raising a new force comprising of three CIED units.

While, overall the menace has been growing, the number of IEDs has been successfully reduced in the conflict zone from 55 percent to 45 percent in the last couple of years.The panel noted that a number of other countries affected by IEDs have carried out legislation to bring this menace under control but Pakistan has yet not made any progress on legal plane.

A regulatory mechanism was discussed in detail for effective control of move of the explosive material and Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) fertilizer from various regional and extra-regional countries. It was identified that the traders could inadvertently help the terror networks by selling electric circuits, long range remote controls, activation switches and CAN fertilizer.

Pakistan is one of the top victims of IEDs attacks by the militants, during the last over one decade, some 33,150 incidents of IEDs explosion took place across the country that took away the lives of 11250 Pakistanis and while injuring another over 21000. To mitigate the damage in future, the entire CIED strategy discussed in the meeting revolved around a whole-of-nation approach to make it efficacious, for which awareness amongst the masses was of prime importance.

The representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), Minister of Industries, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ministry of Interior, FATA Secretariat, Pak-Arab Fertilizers, BIAFO, and Wah Nobel Group attended the meeting.The issues like border control, tracking down terrorist networks and random checks in FATA also came under discussion.