File Photo. Banaras Khan—AFP
Pakistan is once again a victim of cross-border attacks—not from traditional rival India, but rather across the border called the Durand Line—while also suffering assaults from extremist forces within the country, especially in the erstwhile tribal areas of the north and Balochistan province in the south. The cause? A lack of the writ of the state that was deliberately permitted because Pakistan was more focused on its eastern border with India.
Rather than integrating the erstwhile FATA areas after 1947, Pakistan largely ignored the region, leaving it without vital infrastructure that forced its native population to migrate elsewhere—mostly Karachi, which is now considered the world’s largest Pashtun city by population—to avoid a life of poverty. The Durand Line border was likewise ignored, even as Afghanistan never really recognized it. Next came Balochistan, where police exists only in cities, while the rest of the province—dubbed ‘B’ areas—is under the control of paramilitary Levies. The brewing unrest reached a boiling point with the U.S.-led War on Terror, which saw many terrorist organizations headquartered in Afghanistan hiding out in Pakistan, soaking up the sovereignty of a state subsisting without a writ. Today, over half of Pakistan is without this writ, a necessary component of governance to tackle terrorism. Not helping is the return to power in Afghanistan of the Taliban, who Islamabad has supported, despite their ascendance in Kabul seeing the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan increase by 56 percent.
In 1947, the British Raj bequeathed to the Muslims of India a tightly administered state. But next-door Afghanistan was still “uncentralized” and couldn’t be called a normal state. It couldn’t prevent penetration of its territory and was unable to collect taxes. Unfortunately, Pakistan soon began imitating Afghanistan by either losing its own writ or not even trying to impose it. After the devastating assault on the Army Public School in 2014, Pakistan enacted a National Action Plan “to crack down on terrorism,” and a National Counter-Terrorism Authority to restore the state’s writ—though neither has achieved any notable measure of success. Meanwhile, even as no city has been spared by terrorists, the erstwhile tribal areas and Balochistan continue to suffer the brunt of militancy.
In recent years, Pakistan has finally strived to fence the Durand Line—a border that should have been made secure after Partition—but struggles to defend it, lacking the very writ of the state necessary to ensure security. Normalizing the country’s “no-go” areas must now take precedence if Pakistan has any hope of becoming a functional state that doesn’t fall victim to extremists—whether local or foreign.