Pakistan is once again counting its dead people. Soldiers, police officers, other law-enforcement personnel and civilians are being killed across Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while political unrest in Azad Jammu and Kashmir has opened another dangerous fault line.
Two recent articles—Shaukat Javed’s ‘Peace Begins at Home’ and Maleeha Lodhi’s ‘Three-Front Challenge’—have correctly warned that Pakistan cannot indefinitely project diplomatic influence abroad while failing to establish durable peace within its own borders. Their diagnosis must now be carried to its logical conclusion: the country needs neither another slogan nor another open-ended operation, but a constitutionally anchored national strategy that eliminates terrorists, dismantles the economies sustaining them and restores the confidence of citizens whom the state is bound to protect.
The scale of the emergency cannot be minimised. The Center for Research and Security Studies recorded 813 violence-linked fatalities in 248 incidents during the first quarter of 2026. Balochistan’s fatalities more than doubled over the preceding quarter, reaching 443, while Balochistan and KP together accounted for almost 93 percent of the national toll.
In May, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, terrorist attacks rose to 128; Balochistan alone recorded 71 attacks and 52 of the 54 reported abductions. These are not isolated disturbances. They reveal an expanding conflict ecosystem involving religious militancy, separatist violence, organised crime, narcotics, extortion, illicit finance, propaganda and foreign interference.
The courage and sacrifices of Pakistan’s armed forces, police, Frontier Corps and other law-enforcement agencies must be acknowledged without qualification. Armed terrorists who kill civilians, attack trains, schools, markets, security posts and public infrastructure cannot be appeased. The state has both the right and constitutional duty to use proportionate force against them. Intelligence-based operations will remain indispensable.
But the men in uniform cannot be expected to compensate permanently for failures of politics, justice, policing, economic policy and federal governance. Tactical success becomes strategic defeat when cleared territory is not followed by credible administration, courts, schools, hospitals, jobs and public trust.
Military operations can suppress violence and destroy terrorist formations; they cannot alone remove the conditions that enable such formations to recruit, finance themselves and regenerate. This distinction is fundamental: terrorists must be isolated and eliminated; peaceful dissenters, constitutional nationalists, students, lawyers, journalists, traders, community elders and civil-society organisations must be heard. Treating both categories alike enlarges the constituency of violence.
A young person protesting against enforced disappearance, unemployment, denial of royalties, manipulated elections or arbitrary administration is not thereby an enemy of Pakistan. When every complaint is branded foreign-sponsored and every independent voice is treated as subversive, hostile agencies receive the greatest gift available to them: genuine grievances stripped of peaceful avenues for redress.
In an earlier article on Balochistan [Balochistan Crisis: How Denial, Security Policy And Injustice Undermine Pakistan, Friday Times, February 9, 202], it was argued that the “foreign hand” was more often a consequence than the original cause of alienation. Foreign agencies undoubtedly exploit Pakistan’s internal weaknesses. That is the essence of the New Great Game: strategic competitors seek to disrupt corridors, control resources, undermine CPEC, manipulate ethnic and religious divisions and keep the wider region unstable.
However, no external actor can manufacture durable resentment where citizenship is meaningful, institutions are trusted and communities share fairly in their resources. Foreign hands retreat when the ground beneath them disappears; that ground is removed by justice, not denial. The same applies to narcoterrorism. For decades, we have warned that drug trafficking, arms smuggling, kidnapping, money laundering, informal finance and terrorism form a mutually sustaining economy. The post-1979 Afghan war converted borderlands into conduits for weapons and narcotics and created networks that survived every change of regime.
Terrorist organisations do not subsist on ideology alone; they need cash, safe houses, transport, forged documents, weapons and corrupt facilitators. These are supplied by the same underground economy that profits from narcotics, smuggling, illegal mining, extortion, human trafficking and kidnapping for ransom. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime continues to recognise the evolving drug threat in and around Afghanistan, while its research identifies maritime routes used to move drugs originating from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
A serious counterterrorism policy must follow the money and commodities, not merely the gunmen. Every heroin consignment, illegal mine, extortion racket, smuggling corridor, benami asset, hawala channel and politically protected criminal enterprise linked to violence must become a national-security target. This requires an autonomous, professionally staffed and adequately funded National Counter Terrorism Authority capable of performing the coordinating role assigned to it by law.
Military operations can suppress violence and destroy terrorist formations; they cannot alone remove the conditions that enable such formations to recruit, finance themselves and regenerate.
Parliament approved the National Action Plan in 2014; it was revised in 2021, and the government subsequently approved a national policy for preventing violent extremism. The architecture already exists on paper. What remains missing is unified direction, transparent implementation and democratic oversight.
National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) should maintain a single national database covering threats, terrorist financing, proscribed organisations, criminal facilitators and emerging technologies. It should integrate federal and provincial intelligence, establish clear lines of responsibility, publish measurable non-sensitive progress indicators and report quarterly to a bipartisan parliamentary committee. Counterterrorism cannot remain episodic, personality-driven or fragmented among competing institutions.
The operational principle should be police-led, intelligence-driven and military-supported. The armed forces must confront heavily armed formations and cross-border sanctuaries where civilian agencies lack capacity. Routine internal security, investigation, prosecution and community engagement, however, must progressively return to modernised provincial police and counterterrorism departments. Otherwise, extraordinary arrangements become permanent and civilian capacity never develops.
Witness protection, forensic laboratories, digital intelligence, financial investigation and independent prosecution services require far more attention than publicised body counts. Killing one commander while leaving his recruiters, financiers, facilitators and grievance-producing environment intact does not uproot terrorism.
Balochistan requires a political compact, not another collection of packages announced in Islamabad. The first step should be an inclusive dialogue with peaceful nationalist parties, representatives of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, lawyers, academics, women, students, tribal and non-tribal communities, labour, fishermen and elected local bodies.
The agenda must include enforced disappearances, lawful accountability for all violence, transparent resource contracts, provincial and local shares in mineral and port revenues, education, water, health, coastal livelihoods and employment. Those who renounce violence and accept constitutional politics should be offered a credible route to reintegration. Those who murder innocent people must face the law. Reconciliation without accountability is surrender; force without reconciliation is repetition.
The state must also stop manufacturing representation through pliable, discredited or criminalised intermediaries. Patronising anti-people brokers because they can “manage” elections, tribes, districts or protests may provide temporary administrative convenience, but it destroys legitimacy and drives sane voices away from constitutional politics. Pakistan needs authentic representatives, not favourites created through manipulation. A clean and credible electoral process in Balochistan is not a democratic luxury; it is an essential counterinsurgency instrument.
The people of Balochistan must see ownership, not merely extraction, when minerals, gas, ports and strategic corridors are discussed. Resource contracts should be publicly disclosed, constitutionally guaranteed provincial shares paid promptly, and a legally protected portion of revenue reserved for the districts where resources originate. Economic citizenship requires more than employing a few locals as guards and drivers while ownership, profits and decision-making remain elsewhere.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the first national-security requirement is an immediate political ceasefire between the federal and provincial governments. Terrorism cannot be fought through partisan hostility. The province’s elected government, security agencies, police, tribal elders and opposition parties must operate through a permanent coordination mechanism. The mistrust between local communities and state institutions, identified by both recent commentators, cannot be overcome by demanding obedience while withholding participation.
Communities that endured displacement and repeated military operations deserve secure return, compensation, demining, schools, health facilities and lawful cross-border commerce. Local peace committees cannot be exposed and abandoned after serving the state. The trust deficit must be addressed through transparent investigations, restraint at checkpoints, accountable policing and visible civilian administration.
Azad Jannu & Kashmir (AJK) demands equal political wisdom. Coercion against broad-based civic mobilisation is especially self-defeating in a territory central to Pakistan’s international position on Kashmir. Economic hardship, youth unemployment, Islamabad-centred governance and controversy over reserved refugee seats should be negotiated, not suppressed.
The Joint Awami Action Committee and other peaceful actors must be brought into open dialogue; deaths and allegations of excessive force should be impartially investigated; and electoral arrangements reviewed through an inclusive constitutional process. Pakistan cannot credibly champion Kashmiri self-determination across the Line of Control while appearing intolerant of democratic demands within AJK. The strongest answer to hostile propaganda is not censorship but a demonstrably responsive, representative and humane system of governance.
Regional diplomacy remains indispensable. Pakistan should continue demanding verifiable action by Afghanistan against TTP sanctuaries that Islamabad says operate from Afghan territory, while presenting credible evidence of external sponsorship through bilateral, regional and international forums. Border management, however, should not collectively punish communities or destroy lawful trade on which they depend. Current tensions and cross-border attacks show that military pressure alone has not produced the required cooperation from Kabul.
Engagement with Iran, China, Central Asian states and Gulf countries must integrate counter-narcotics cooperation, financial intelligence, maritime surveillance, border management and development of legal commerce. The answer to the New Great Game [Iran Conflict And return Of Great Power Politics, Friday Times, March 21, 202] is not isolation or permanent militarisation. It is regional economic interdependence backed by internal cohesion.
The most powerful counter-narrative will not come from official advertisements. It will emerge when the Constitution is experienced in daily life—when a Baloch child sees a school rather than a checkpoint as the face of the state; when a displaced family in Waziristan returns with dignity; when an AJK protester is treated as a citizen rather than a security problem; and when the family of a fallen soldier knows that civilian leaders are removing the conditions that repeatedly send young men into battle.
Pakistan’s armed forces have defended the country at an immense human cost. A reconciliatory strategy does not diminish their role; it prevents their sacrifices from being squandered by defective governance. National security is too important to be left to soldiers alone. Parliament, political parties, courts, provincial governments, police, universities, media, religious scholars and civil society must carry their share of the burden. Peace begins at home, but it begins with truth. Terrorism has external sponsors, ideological roots and criminal financiers. It also feeds on exclusion, manipulated politics, economic injustice and institutional mistrust. Pakistan will uproot it only by confronting all these realities together.
The choice is not between force and dialogue. It is between an intelligent state that uses force lawfully while expanding justice, and an exhausted state that repeatedly clears the same ground without ever winning its people. The first can defeat terrorism. The second can only postpone its return.