DIGITAL FRONTLINES: THE ADEQUACY OF PAKISTAN'S COUNTER-TERRORISM LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN THE AGE OF CYBER-TERRORISM AND FINTECH

Abstract

The strategic location of Pakistan and its uncompromising threat environment require a sound and unified counter-terrorism (CT) jurisprudence. In reaction to transnational militant organizations, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) that have shown an advanced use of digital platforms, Pakistan uses a multi-layered legal framework (Arshad Khan, 2018; Institute for Economic and Peace, 2025). The framework is largely based on the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997 which is given supplementary by the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016 and historically the now abolished Pakistan Protection Act (PPA) 2014 (Arshad Khan, 2018; Aziz, 2018). Through this study, the doctrinal legal analysis, which is concerned with statutory interpretation, international comparative standards, and critical policy criticisms, including the outcomes of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are used. The overriding point is that the current regime is poor, internally contradictory and has harsh jurisdictional overlaps. Three fundamental failures of this vulnerability include consistency in defining cyber-terrorism as a concept, the broad legislation of which leads to violation of human rights in combating the spread of internet radicalization (Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2018), and operational gaps in the control of Virtual Assets (VAs) in financing terrorism (U.S. Department of State, 2025), despite the critical amendments being made to the ATA. These systemic problems, which can be defined in terms of the Legislative-Operative Gap paradigm, not only compromise the national security goals but also highly important international compliance requirements, which require urgent consolidation of the legislative framework and a firm demarcation of the enforcement power.