PREPARING a comprehensive anti-insurgency strategy is one thing; implementing it quite another. The task is onerous, because the Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, are not always in the battlefield; they live among the people and kill and maim them in the name of religion to advance their perverted philosophy. From this point of view, the nation will watch with hope the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s comprehensive strategy to fight the dangers facing the province — and country — in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Presented to the provincial cabinet earlier this month, the 24-page document has been called the first comprehensive “state response” to the militancy that has been Pakistan’s scourge for more than a decade. The plan displays realism when it cautions against the belief that terrorism in Pakistan will end after Isaf pulls out. Instead, it warns that the sense of victory among the Afghan Taliban could embolden the extremists here to take on the Pakistani state with the help of a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. On this basis, the paper pleads for a comprehensive strategy in terms of governance, deliverance and coordination to root out militancy in the province in all its forms.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has reasons to be concerned about the dangers ahead, for no province has suffered so much at the hands of the terrorists as it has. Yet any anti-insurgency scheme confined to the province is unlikely to give long-term results unless extended to Fata. Because Fata is federally administered, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has to have Islamabad on board. The federal government has its own priorities, and its policies have broader concerns because they have a bearing on Islamabad’s foreign policy. For that reason it may not always see eye to eye with the provincial government on details. Nevertheless, the two sides have no choice but to co-ordinate their policies and their implementation if they have to destroy what the policy paper calls “termites” eating the structure from within. The dangers for Pakistan are immense, because it will be called upon to deal with the mess that will be Afghanistan after Nato forces quit.