THE future of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains unclear, whether it’s as a single entity or as a democratic one. PTI, we are told, has been made PNG — once again. And the south of KP is reportedly being carved out rapidly to be a new province or to simply reverse the amendment that made the former Fata part of KP. No one is really sure what the coming days hold.
Amid this confusion, a newly appointed member of the Area Representative and Development Council (ARDC) for the special emergency-hit districts of the south has created another storm in a teacup. In a video statement he spoke of reaching out to the Afghan Taliban to bring peace to Pakistan. Considering that this preference for dialogue over conflict with the fitna-across-the-border ostensibly has been the reason the PTI government was sent home, a similar message of love from the new advisory council just wasn’t cricket. But before we could get our breath back at this audacity, the new spokesman of the region, Mehmood Jan Babar, added to the mess by not denying the idea altogether.
Eventually Samar Bilour, who represents the Peshawar-led advisory council, had to enter the fray to diss the notion of talks. As an aside, we now have a Peshawar council and a Southern council.
Be that as it may, the point is these statements have simply added to the confusion surrounding the province. And terrorism, despite the frequency of the attacks and the statements of the government, has taken a backseat.
The focus is more on what the grand plan for KP is. Is it simply to close the doors on PTI? Is it to conduct an experiment on the efficacy of newer, smaller provinces? Or is it simply to reverse the Fata merger? Or perhaps it was to give the governor the chance to clear encroachments, a favourite problem for most non-elected officials these days. As the Urdu saying goes, there are as many rumours as there are mouths.
We appear to be using the same old playbook put together in the post-Musharraf period.
But none of these rumours seem to be highlighting the basic issue — how to address the decades-old problem of militancy in these regions. Other than vague promises of fighting the problem, there is little that has been shared with the people to explain what the new government is doing or planning to do.
And this is where the problem lies.
Militancy is going from bad to worse. The intensity of the attacks is worrying and impacts the entire country, especially one looking for more foreign investment. But while the state is clear on its decision to fight its way to victory, it doesn’t seem to have a clear strategy or path for this — or so it appears to those on the outside.
Any strategy to succeed must take into account the current environment.
However, we appear to be using the same old playbook put together in the post-Musharraf period when the TTP was controlling large swathes of land in what is now former Fata. In order to flush the Taliban out, military operations were conducted after the ordinary residents were persuaded to leave their homes and villages before the clearing out was done. And once the area/s were cleared, the displaced people were allowed to return to their homes and businesses.
However, nearly two decades later, the TTP is no longer controlling areas; it seems to appear only to conduct attacks or block roads, or carry out other activities and then melt away. And yet, it seems, our strategy remains the same — of wanting to clear out areas, be it at the level of villages and so on.
But if the TTP is not controlling these areas and the plan is to clear out the residents before launching operations, surely the TTP will also vacate the areas along with the residents and simply return later. How is this effective? And this is all the more difficult now because 20 years earlier, the TTP escaped to an Afghanistan run by a hostile government, which is no longer the case. But these questions are really not being discussed.
The intelligence-based operations (IBOs) are also offered as an alternative. Though once again, there is little clarity on how effective these are; they only become public when they lead to deaths of troops, which is tragic. But once again, there is little information available on why there is even one fatality during an IBO. And if they are effective, then why has the problem simply grown?
The second problem with this strategy is the public sentiment, which is against military operations because of the displacement and suffering that comes in the wake of this. But more than that, the displacements were not accompanied by the compensation the people had been promised — for the damage to their property and business. This has been a major reason for their reluctance to support operations this time around. And yet, this also does not seem to have led to any kind of brainstorming about what to do differently.
More worrying still is the distrust or alienation of the people in general from the state as well as the TTP. In many anecdotal accounts, it is suggested the local residents of the affected areas see the activities of the TTP and the state as alienating. These gaps with the state, ideally, should be bridged before operations are launched. It is rather obvious that kinetic operations cannot succeed without the people’s support. And yet the state seems to be doing little to earn this support or trust.
And along with all this comes the larger issue of why the kinetic operations, whenever they have succeeded, are not followed by a successful handover to strong functioning civilian institutions which can then govern effectively. In other words, the build-and-transfer part has eluded us for decades.
Indeed, the reduction of the debate over terrorism to a simple one of using force or not is a very one-dimensional one. The problem requires a lot more depth and nuance than is realised.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2026