Pakistan faces a different threat environment, and sustained cooperation among political stakeholders, intelligence agencies, and law-enforcement institutions can help prevent security threats before they materialise
ByShakeel Ahmed Shah | November 2026
Pakistan’s political leaders rarely disagree on the need to defeat terrorism. Their differences emerge over who should act, who should pay, and who should carry the blame after another attack. Between these competing claims stand citizens whose safety cannot wait for political reconciliation. For a family mourning a police officer, shopkeeper, or child, the distinction between federal responsibility and provincial failure offers little consolation.
The scale of the threat demands more than declarations of resolve. The Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index 2026 ranked Pakistan as the country most affected by terrorism, recording 1,139 terrorism deaths and 1,045 incidents in 2025. These are the report’s terrorism figures, rather than a count of all conflict-related fatalities. Behind them lies a crisis of public safety and confidence in government.
The question is how Pakistan can organise cooperation when its leaders distrust one another. Calls for unity must become arrangements that make responsibilities explicit, funding predictable and obstruction visible. Political disagreements will persist; the protection of citizens must continue regardless.
A starting point would be a counterterrorism compact endorsed by the federal government, provincial leadership and major opposition parties. It should establish shared priorities, institutional responsibilities and measurable commitments. Representatives of affected communities must participate, including those critical of Islamabad. A strategy imposed on a province without meaningful consultation risks losing the local knowledge and political ownership needed to implement it.
Participation should not require silence about official failures. Parties must remain free to scrutinise operations, expenditure and policy. They should nevertheless commit to attending security consultations, rejecting armed violence and avoiding unverified accusations after attacks. Government should share responsibility for decisions and credit for improvements; opposition parties should accept responsibility for implementing agreements they endorse.
Pakistan already has an institution intended to support this cooperation. NACTA’s official mandate includes collating intelligence, coordinating stakeholders, and preparing threat assessments. The priority should be to resource that mandate and connect it to regular federal-provincial reviews. Each decision should identify who must act, by when, and with what resources. Provincial apex committees should follow the same agreed priorities, while parliamentary committees receive substantive progress reports.
Pakistan’s own experience offers a useful example of measurable institutional reform. In October 2022, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed Pakistan from increased monitoring after it fulfilled two action plans encompassing 34 items. FATF explicitly recognised improvements in the effectiveness of its anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing system. This was a defined institutional achievement, not evidence that terrorist financing had disappeared. It nevertheless shows that specified obligations and external scrutiny can accompany demonstrable progress.
That discipline should inform domestic security planning. Federal and provincial authorities should agree on a jointly costed programme for exposed districts. Funding should support police protection, communications, forensic services, investigators, prosecutors, and emergency response. Allocations must reflect threat levels and capacity gaps, with transparent audits. Islamabad should not demand results without examining resources; provinces should account for how existing funds are used.
Professional cooperation also needs continuity. Arbitrary transfers and political interference undermine institutional memory. Police investigators, intelligence personnel, and prosecutors should have established channels to share relevant information lawfully and prepare cases that withstand judicial scrutiny. Military capabilities remain essential against heavily armed networks, but civilian institutions must be able to maintain security after operations conclude.
Britain provides a documented example of police-intelligence cooperation producing operational results. In an October 2024 parliamentary answer, the Home Office reported that MI5 and the police had jointly disrupted 43 late-stage attack plots since March 2017. Pakistan faces a different threat environment and cannot simply import British arrangements. The relevant lesson is narrower: sustained cooperation between intelligence and law-enforcement institutions can yield identifiable preventive outcomes.
However, coordination must allow different responses to different armed movements. Research published by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center makes these distinctions concrete. Its May 2023 study describes the TTP’s Islamist origins, demands concerning sharia and the former tribal areas, and expansion through mergers with militant networks. Its April 2025 analysis of the Baloch insurgency identifies separatist objectives and grievances concerning political exclusion, resources, and alleged abuses. It also traces the expansion of militancy into Baloch middle-class areas.
These findings support a differentiated approach; they do not establish that every recruit has the same motive or that communities support militants. In Balochistan, security measures should accompany credible engagement on representation, rights, and development. In vulnerable districts of KP, trusted policing and accessible administration should help residents resist intimidation. National agreement should set common goals while letting provincial and local authorities shape implementation.
Public trust must be treated as part of security policy. Authorities should distinguish peaceful dissent from violence, investigate allegations of abuse, and provide accessible grievance mechanisms. Where operations displace families or damage livelihoods, compensation and rehabilitation should be planned and funded from the outset. Citizens are more likely to cooperate when they expect protection and fair treatment.
Success must therefore be assessed beyond arrests and announced operations. Reviews should examine civilian safety, disrupted financing, the quality of prosecutions, assistance to victims and public confidence. Independent scrutiny can expose weaknesses before they become disasters. Confidentiality should protect sensitive information without becoming a blanket excuse for withholding evidence of performance.
The external dimension requires consistency as well. Federal diplomacy and border policy should draw on provincial experience, particularly the concerns of communities whose livelihoods depend on cross-border movement. Intelligence, diplomatic engagement and border administration should serve agreed objectives. Domestic political actors should avoid competing messages that weaken the coherence of Pakistan’s position.
Within three months (a quarter of a year as a tangible timeframe), leaders could agree on a shared threat assessment, approve a funded implementation programme, and establish regular parliamentary review. This would provide an initial test of seriousness, rather than another open-ended promise. Public reporting should identify completed commitments, outstanding gaps, and responsibility for corrective action.
Pakistan’s political parties do not need to be friends or agree on everything; they need to uphold their responsibilities despite their differences. The federal government must share decision-making, provincial governments must lead implementation, and security institutions must accept oversight. Unity matters only when it protects people. Until then, each renewed pledge of resolve will raise the same painful question: why did cooperation come only after more lives were lost?
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