Spike in terrorist activity in Balochistan is stark reminder of the fact that the State is being contested from within.
These are not random outbursts of violence—they are calculated statements of defiance by groups like the Baloch Liberation Army, which now operate with political ambition and ideological clarity.
When a non-state actor can disrupt billion-dollar projects and challenge a global power like China on Pakistani soil, it signals something deeper: a collapse of the state’s moral and administrative authority.
The situation in Balochistan is particularly revealing.
Years of enforced disappearances, political exclusion, and extrac-tive development have deeply alienated the population.
Rather than integrating the province into the national fabric, the state relied on coercion and transactional alliances.
In that vacuum, insurgents gained not only territory but also legitimacy in the eyes of local communities.
Meanwhile, the resurgence of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the rise in attacks across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reveal how Pakistan’s borders have become porous—not just geographically, but ideologically.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the TTP has found space to reorganize and regroup.
Their attacks on police and military convoys now appear deliberate, coordinated, and aimed at exhausting a state already stretched thin.
Within Paki-stan’s heartland, sectarian outfits continue to thrive under weak regulation.
Once instrumental led by the state as tools of foreign and domestic policy, these groups now exert control over education, manipulate public discourse, and enforce ideological conformity.
No longer mere proxies, they function as independent power centres—often more agile and effective at mobilizing than formal political institutions.
The tragedy is not only that monsters have emerged—it is that they were fed, armed, and given space by a state fearful of plurality and obsessed with controlling identity.
In its pursuit of a narrow, exclusionary nationalism, the state fractured its own foundations.
The costs are now being paid in blood, lost sovereignty, and a fraying social fabric.
Multiple competing sovereignties—armed, organized, and confident enough to challenge the very writ of the state.
Decades of appeasement—whether for electoral gain or geopolitical convenience—have brought the crisis full circle.
The insurgents, once tolerated or instrumentalized, now operate autonomously while the state stands diminished and reactive.
These monsters were not born overnight.
The seeds were sown early, when Pakistan began to drift from the vision its founder laid out in 1947.
Jinnah’s call for a state where religion would not define citizenship and all communities would be equal before the law was quickly cast aside.
The Objectives Resolution of 1949 marked a shift from civic to belief-based nationalism.
What followed was not cohesion, but fragmentation—an identity project that undermined the very idea of equal citizenship.
To salvage its sovereignty, Pakistan must return to that original vision.
This means reimagining the constitution to remove discriminatory clauses, breaking the hold of sectarian and ethnic actors, and rebuilding a shared civic identity rooted in justice, inclusion, and dignity.
It is not just a reform agenda—it is the only viable path to survival.
—The writer is a political analyst, based in Islamabad. (riaz.missen@gmail.com)
