How Pakistan’s selective blindness has turned into a security nightmare

Pakistan appears to be entering yet another phase of intensified internal violence—one that bears the familiar markers of past cycles but unfolds under far less forgiving regional and economic conditions. Over the last 48 hours alone, clashes involving Baloch insurgents and Islamist militants have resulted in heavy militant casualties, losses to security forces, and civilian deaths. The pace, coordination, and geographic spread suggest not isolated incidents, but a coordinated escalation.

What is striking is the simultaneity of threats. On one axis, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has reasserted its insurgent momentum in Baluchistan through direct engagements with the Pakistan Army, targeting symbols of state authority and infrastructure. On another, recent military raids in Harnai and Panjgur appear aimed at Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) networks, indicating a parallel Islamist resurgence. This dual-front internal challenge—separatist insurgency alongside ideological terrorism—is precisely the configuration that has historically stretched Pakistan’s security apparatus.

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The key question is whether this moment marks a threshold shift. The Pakistan Army is not yet deployed in the manner seen during Operation Zarb-e-Azb, but precedent suggests that prolonged escalation often forces precisely such an outcome. Large-scale internal deployment carries its own risks: militarisation of civilian spaces, political destabilisation, and the diversion of forces from external postures. It is also the pathway through which Pakistan has repeatedly treated symptoms rather than causes.

Concerns about a slide toward mass-casualty terrorism are therefore not alarmist. The memory of the Army Public School attack in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, remains embedded in Pakistan’s strategic consciousness. That atrocity was not an aberration—it was the logical culmination of years of selective counterterrorism, ideological ambiguity, and tolerance of extremist ecosystems. The conditions that incubated it have not been fundamentally dismantled.

This is where Pakistan’s enduring contradiction becomes evident. Islamist terrorism remains framed as a security problem rather than an ideological one. No sustained effort has been made to dismantle radicalisation networks, reform religious discourse, or challenge extremist narratives within society. Meanwhile, the Baloch insurgency—rooted in political alienation, economic exclusion, and coercive governance—continues to be treated almost exclusively through force. These are two very different conflicts, yet both are being managed through the same blunt instrument.

The regional dimension only compounds the problem. Afghanistan today is not merely a neighbour but a permissive rear space. Cross-border militant movement, ideological reinforcement, and operational sanctuary—particularly for Islamist groups—remain unresolved realities. Pakistan’s leverage over Kabul has proven far weaker than anticipated, and its assumptions of strategic depth have quietly inverted into strategic exposure.

External actors have done little to alter this trajectory. The United States, the “once-and-again” partner, has consistently prioritised short-term counterterrorism cooperation over long-term stabilisation. Even as Washington recognised that terror incubation disproportionately occurs in this region, its episodic engagement left behind vacuums rather than institutions. Meanwhile, influential Islamic states—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others—have shown little appetite for deploying religious or ideological outreach to counter radicalism in Pakistan, despite possessing both legitimacy and leverage.

What we are witnessing, therefore, is not merely a spike in violence but the reassertion of structural instability. Pakistan remains a country affected by terrorism not because it lacks military capability, but because it has never resolved the ideological, political, and regional contradictions that sustain violence. Escalation may be managed; it will almost certainly be suppressed. Resolution, however, remains elusive.

For observers—and neighbours—this moment warrants close attention. History suggests that when Pakistan’s internal security cycle turns violent, the consequences rarely remain contained within its borders.

As has often been the case, Pakistan is likely to attribute the current wave of violence to external manipulation, with India serving as the most convenient explanation. Such attribution avoids a harder truth. Decades of nurturing Punjab-based terror proxies for employment against Jammu and Kashmir have not remained compartmentalised. Militant ecosystems do not respect intended boundaries; tactics, ideologies, and organisational cultures inevitably seep inward. The normalisation of violence as an instrument of policy has gradually permeated society, where coercion is justified across causes—religious, ethnic, or political.

Until there is organised societal pushback against this culture, rather than selective outrage depending on the target, meaningful change is unlikely. Military operations may suppress symptoms, but without introspection and rejection of violence as a legitimate tool, Pakistan’s internal instability will continue to regenerate itself.

What past experience also reveals is the reliance on indiscriminate counter-violence by the Pakistani state, particularly the Pakistan Army, as the default response to internal insurgency. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and adjoining tribal areas, the use of helicopter gunships, artillery, and even fixed-wing aircraft became routine. Villages were evacuated, entire habitations flattened, and populations displaced in the name of restoring order.

Such approaches may deliver short-term tactical dominance, but strategically they are self-defeating. The destruction of homes and livelihoods entrenches grievance, delegitimises the state, and ensures the emergence of another generation radicalised by memory and loss, committed less to ideology than to revenge. Violence, in such environments, becomes hereditary.

Equally absent has been any sustained attempt to carry society along through mass outreach, reconciliation, and rehabilitation. Where such efforts have been contemplated, they have remained episodic—often under-resourced, politically unsupported, or viewed with suspicion by the security establishment itself. A deeper obstacle lies in institutional mindset. The Pakistan Army remains reluctant to project empathy or flexibility, fearing that outreach is interpreted as weakness and exploited by militant groups.

Ironically, this contrasts sharply with its sophisticated external narrative management through Inter-Services Public Relations. Internally, however, it has struggled to replicate the kind of people-centric stabilisation models—such as the WHAM programmes—that the Indian Army has employed with measured success. The gap between kinetic capability and societal engagement remains Pakistan’s most persistent vulnerability.

(The writer is the former Commander of India’s Srinagar-based Chinar Corps. Currently he is the Chancellor of the Central University of Kashmir and a member of the National Disaster Management Authority. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)