Communication Strategies Towards Preventing Violent Extremist Attacks in Pakistan

Abstract

With unpredictable purposes, extremism in Pakistan has attracted considerable local and global  attention, especially after 9/11. Due to war against terrorism, Pakistan has suffered tremendous  losses both in terms of number of precious lives and billions of dollars in foreign investment; economic terrorism imposed by foreign sponsored and homegrown terrorist networks. The country  has been facing the challenging situations in the form of target killings and bomb blasts. On 16  December 2014 the brutal terrorist attack on Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar Pakistan  appeared as major catastrophe, as killing children has become a major puzzle to our understanding  of terrorism. This research examines the consequences of extremist attacks in Pakistan while  revealing APS attack and argues that communication strategies can be assimilated into policies as  preventive measures to minimize extremism and establish peace. To investigate this, qualitative  methodology has been used, based on in-depth interviews to provide comprehensive perspectives  from field experts and practitioners, affiliated with the same area. Thus, with the observations of  13 Informants, the study revealed that strategic communication for countering violence extremism  from both the long-term and short-time strategic approaches are expedient. The study discovered  that plausible communication strategies required to counter violent extremist need to underscore  preventive communication strategies and consistent use of credible sources of information. In  order to support the findings, models were generated through NVivo 10. Finally, it is  recommended that communication strategies should convey healthy messages regarding conduct and aptitude to far-reaching populations through media and other sources of communication.