🇵🇰 Pakistan’s insurgency cycle persists

Pakistan continues to face near-daily militant attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan despite years of counterterrorism operations, with soldiers, police and civilians killed each month. A South China Morning Post report examines how repeated operations against Taliban and Baloch insurgents have produced tactical gains but failed to end the violence along the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

Militants have targeted patrols, checkpoints, police stations and administrative centres using roadside bombs, drones, ambushes, suicide attacks, raids, assassinations and kidnappings. The report says Pakistan’s military regularly announces large numbers of militants killed, but these battlefield results have not translated into strategic stability, while the apparent convergence of two separate insurgencies raises pressure on state authority in the west.

The continuing violence risks prolonging instability in frontier regions and complicating Pakistan’s wider security and investment environment. The article points to the limits of a force-led approach without a broader political strategy.

#Pakistan #Afghanistan #Iran

@asianomics