Tariq Khosa has been actively involved in the law enforcement sphere since 1973. During about four decades, he served in various supervisory and command positions in the Police Service of Pakistan, and has been engaged in structural and operational reforms in the policing and justice sectors. He is currently the Director of the Centre for Governance Research (CGR-Pakistan) and a member of the Board of Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

He continues to share his expertise and is regularly asked to provide advice to governments and institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank on issues linked to organised crime and terrorism. He was, until recently, associated with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as Strategic Advisor on Rule of Law and Criminal Justice for Pakistan.

In October 2020, Tariq joined the Board of Directors of the Vienna-based Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

Since 2018, he is a Member of the Police Reforms Committee constituted by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan under the Law and Justice Commission.

In 2018, Tariq served as Member of Prime Minister’s Task Force on Austerity and Restructuring of Government.

In 2019, he launched the National Initiative against Organized Crime (NIOC) in Pakistan.

Before his retirement in 2011, he was Federal Secretary of Narcotics Control Ministry in Pakistan. He formulated the new National Anti-Narcotics Policy, which the Cabinet approved in July 2010. He was also co-chair of the Governance Committee of the UNODC Country Programme on Rule of Law, Criminal Justice and Healthcare (2010-14).

In his previous roles, Tariq served as Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency in 2009. As head of the National Central Bureau with INTERPOL he was elected Member for Asia in the Executive Committee and contributed to international police cooperation. During this time, he was actively involved in the establishment of the Interpol Global Complex of Innovation in Singapore.

Prior to this, Tariq held several positions within the Pakistan Government and was Director General of the National Police Bureau in 2008, which allowed him to work actively on various police reform initiatives at national level. He was part of the Working Group that drafted the Counterterrorism National Action Plan launched by the Government of Pakistan in 2015.

Tariq holds a Master’s degree in Defense and Strategic Studies from the National Defense College, Islamabad, Pakistan. He was a Hubert Humphrey Fellow under Fulbright Exchange Program at the Graduate School of Public Affairs in University of Washington Seattle, USA, in 1987-88.

He is the author of two books: “The Faltering State: Pakistan’s Internal Security Landscape” (Oxford University Press, 2017); and “Inconvenient Truths: Pakistan’s Governance Challenges” (Lightstone Publishers, 2019). His first book won the national Best Book of Year Award in Non-Fiction Category in 2019.