Resilience against organised crime

IN recent years, Pakistan has taken many steps to combat organised crime (OC); resultantly, it was taken off the FATF grey list in 2022. However, it remains on the FATF’s ‘enhanced follow-up’ list in order to assess the sustained, on-the-ground implementation of its anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) steps.

Thus, our current status with the FATF requires us continuously to assess the implementation and effectiveness of our ongoing efforts against OC.

Tackling OC can be divided into two broad areas, ie, targeting criminality (criminal markets and actors) and strengthening society’s resilience against OC. While the first area focuses on intelligence, law enforcement and punitive measures, the second centres on addressing the contextual factors that provide an environment conducive to OC. This is the model followed by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime in its successive Global Organised Crime Indices (GOCI). While not infallible, these global indices serve at least as rough-and-ready comparative assessments across different fields.

In its latest GOCI, issued in 2025, Pakistan has been placed in 45th position out of 193 countries, ie, in the category of countries with high vulnerability to OC and low resilience to combat it. That is a grave indictment of Pakistan’s efforts. It indicates that despite our ongoing policies, we not only remain extremely vulnerable to OC, but our will or capability to reduce the contextual factors sustaining it also remains very weak. This calls for a fundamental review of the balance between targeting criminality and strengthening resilience, which should complement each other.

Pakistan is among the countries with high vulnerability to organised crime — and low resilience against it.

While a lot has been written about efforts to deal with OC’s criminality (criminal markets and criminal actors), the subject of building resilience against OC in society has received little attention. GOCI 2025 has highlighted the following five areas of greatest weakness in building resilience against OC in Pakistan:

Political leadership and governance: The most important factor for building resilience against OC in any society is the quality of its political leadership and governance. Both these factors have been assessed by GOCI 2025 as having a non-existent or nominal role in building resilience in Pakistan. In fact, when political leadership and governance fail to play their due role, they not only facilitate OC but also weaken the government’s efforts to combat it. Four factors have been specifically identified in this regard. One, a lack of trust in state institutions because the controversial elections of 2024 weakened the government’s legitimacy. Two, political interference in law enforcement. Three, widespread corruption in the system. Four, the military’s retention of “substantial control over political processes”. It follows that improving the quality of political leadership and governance deserves the highest priority in building resilience against OC.

Judicial system and detention: The ability of any judicial system to dispense justice is crucial to building resilience against OC. Pakistan’s judiciary has been assessed by the indices as “weak and subject to political influence, with the military often shaping judicial outcomes”. Also, the latest Transparency International report has assessed the judiciary as the third most corrupt institution in the country. Working in such a judicial system makes combating OC difficult.

Government transparency and accountability: Countries with higher government transparency and greater accountability have been found to be more successful in combating OC. For Pakistan, the index has assessed both these factors as ineffective. The 2026 World Press Freedom Index has ranked Pakistan 153rd out of 180 countries — among the lowest 20 per cent in the world. In such an environment, it is risky for investigative journalists to publish reports about major scandals. Similarly, where accountability is concerned, organisations mandated to deal with corruption, like NAB, have been criticised “for political bias, often pursuing opposition leaders while protecting those aligned with the ruling establishment”. Interestingly, the 2025 Global Index on Fraud places Pakistan 112th out of 112 countries — in other words, it is the most permissive country in the world for fraudulent practices. OC thrives in such a society, and its main enablers continue largely unharmed, reducing the effectiveness of the law-enforcement agencies.

Economic regulatory capacity: Since OC is a form of criminal enterprise with the sole objective of making money through illegal activities economic regulatory institutions like SECP assume great importance. The GOCI ranks the capacity of Pakistan’s economic regulatory agencies very low. SECP’s recent initiative to develop a central registry of UBOs (ultimate beneficiary owners) this year is welcome. Its effectiveness on the ground, however, remains to be seen. There is a greater need for public scrutiny of agencies like SECP and for holding them accountable.

Victim and witness support: Another important pillar of the strategy to build resilience against OC is the extent of security provided to witnesses and victims of OC. In Pakistan, this is an example of technical compliance with FATF standards but with poor implementation. Every province has had specific witness protection laws for years; yet these laws have rarely been used and the witnesses have rarely been provided security, undermining the effectiveness of law-enforcement efforts and leading to non-reporting of OC and large-scale acquittals by the courts. The protection of witnesses needs to be given the importance it deserves.

The cumulative effect of the weaknesses of these five crucial areas is the creation of an environment conducive to the spread of OC. Combating OC in such a context is like fighting in hostile territory. The situation calls for national action plans by the AML authority in each of these five areas and regular monitoring with regard to specific key performance indicators. In the interest of transparency and accountability, the implementation reports of these action plans should be made public.

Strategically speaking, in the fight against OC, action against criminality and the effort to build resilience must go hand in hand. Ignoring one at the cost of the other is self-defeating. The sooner this is realised, the better it will be — otherwise, our successes shall continue to be merely tactical and the dents in OC shall remain superficial.

The writer is a former director general, Federal Investigation Agency, Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2026

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