Pakistan’s security forces are fighting with genuine commitment. The regional architecture surrounding the conflict continues to undermine lasting stability.
The numbers emerging from North Waziristan are significant. In the span of roughly ten days, Pakistani security forces operating under the Azm-e-Istehkam campaign neutralised more than fifty militants linked to Fitna al-Khawarij, the state’s designation for Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The operational tempo remains high, intelligence coordination appears increasingly refined, and the ISPR’s messaging has been consistent: the campaign will continue without pause.
By any tactical measure, the performance of Pakistan’s security forces has been formidable.
Yet for those familiar with Pakistan’s counterterrorism history, there is also a familiar concern. Not because the soldiers on the ground are failing, they are not, but because Pakistan has repeatedly succeeded militarily while being strategically undermined by external sanctuaries and regional actors operating beyond its borders.
The Pattern Pakistan Keeps Confronting
The modern template for Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations was established with Zarb-e-Azb in 2014. That campaign dismantled entrenched militant infrastructure in North Waziristan, disrupted command networks, and dramatically reduced the frequency of large-scale terrorist attacks across Pakistan. Radd-ul-Fasaad later expanded that pressure nationwide, targeting sleeper cells and logistical facilitators.
Pakistan paid heavily for those victories. Thousands of civilians and security personnel lost their lives over two decades of conflict. Entire tribal regions were destabilised. Yet despite these sacrifices, the militant threat repeatedly regenerated.
Why?
Because militancy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal belt has never been sustained solely by the number of fighters inside Pakistan. It survives through cross-border sanctuary, external financing, ideological patronage, and the ability of militant groups to retreat into Afghan territory whenever pressure intensifies.
This is the central reality Pakistan continues to confront: militants are being fought inside Pakistan while being sheltered outside it.
Why the Current Threat Is More Dangerous
Azm-e-Istehkam faces a more complex battlefield than Zarb-e-Azb ever did.
The TTP of 2026 is not the weakened network Pakistan fought in 2014. Following the Afghan Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021, the group rapidly reconstituted itself across the border. It gained access to advanced weaponry left behind after the US withdrawal, greater operational freedom, and, most critically, geographic sanctuary.
Pakistan has repeatedly raised concerns with the Afghan interim government regarding TTP safe havens in provinces such as Khost, Paktika, and Nangarhar. Those concerns have largely gone unanswered.
The contradiction has become increasingly difficult to ignore: Kabul publicly speaks of regional stability while allowing anti-Pakistan militant organisations to operate from Afghan soil. The result is an asymmetrical conflict in which Pakistani forces clear territory, only for militants to regroup across an international border and reinfiltrate later.
No state can sustainably eliminate terrorism while hostile actors enjoy uncontested sanctuary next door.
The India Factor Pakistan Can No Longer Ignore
There is also a broader geopolitical dimension that Pakistan’s security establishment has become increasingly vocal about.
Official statements surrounding recent operations have consistently referred to militants as “foreign-sponsored” and “India-backed.” Critics often dismiss this language as rhetoric, but Pakistan’s concerns do not emerge in a vacuum. India has long viewed Pakistan’s western instability as strategically useful, particularly as Islamabad remains internally occupied by security pressures along the Afghan frontier.
From Pakistan’s perspective, the convergence of hostile intelligence activity, anti-state militant violence, and destabilisation efforts in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cannot simply be treated as coincidence. Pakistani officials increasingly argue that regional adversaries benefit directly from a prolonged insurgency inside Pakistan.
Whether through covert facilitation, intelligence penetration, or proxy relationships cultivated over years of regional rivalry, the perception within Pakistan’s security circles is clear: the militant threat is no longer merely domestic. It is geopolitical.
And in many ways, Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations today are being fought not only against armed groups, but against an entire ecosystem that enables them.
What Azm-e-Istehkam Is Trying to Do Differently
To its credit, Azm-e-Istehkam was never designed as a purely kinetic campaign.
When announced in June 2024, Pakistani officials outlined a broader framework combining military operations with intelligence integration, socioeconomic development, law-enforcement reform, and political stabilisation in conflict-affected areas. Unlike previous campaigns, the emphasis was placed on precision operations rather than large-scale displacement of civilian populations.
That reflects an important evolution in Pakistan’s counterterrorism doctrine. The military has clearly absorbed lessons from earlier operations.
The challenge, however, lies in whether the civilian and political components can keep pace with military effort. Development initiatives remain uneven, governance gaps persist, and political fragmentation inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continues to complicate long-term stabilisation.
Even the most successful military operation cannot permanently secure regions where governance remains weak and external actors continue to fuel instability.
What Durable Success Actually Requires
None of this diminishes the sacrifices being made by Pakistan’s security forces. The soldiers conducting intelligence-based operations in Shewa, Mir Ali, and across North Waziristan are operating in some of the most difficult terrain in the region against an enemy that benefits from cross-border mobility and foreign backing. Their operational effectiveness is visible in the precision of current strikes, the reduction in collateral displacement, and the sustained pressure being maintained against militant networks.
But tactical victories alone are not enough. Pakistan’s long-term success depends on two parallel developments: first, genuine international pressure on the Afghan Taliban to dismantle TTP sanctuaries rather than tolerate them; and second, broader recognition that Pakistan’s counterterrorism war is not being fought in isolation, but within a regional proxy environment where hostile actors continue to exploit instability for strategic gain.
Pakistan’s military has demonstrated that it can clear territory.
The harder question and the one the region have yet to answer honestly is why Pakistan continues to be forced to fight the same war repeatedly while those enabling the violence escape meaningful accountability.
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