EVERY so often, a Pakistani official trots out numbers to buttress the claim that the country has suffered a great deal from militancy. There is little doubt that Pakistan has suffered greatly and disastrously from militancy — and that is perhaps why the official attempts at putting a number on the losses come across as crude and unnecessary.

This week, the Foreign Office claimed that the country has suffered $103bn worth of losses and over 55,000 lives to militancy and terrorism. But even when it comes to the lives lost, there is no single database that exists to even remotely corroborate the claim of fatalities. Indeed, the official estimate — or, perhaps, guesstimate — has ranged over the past year alone from less than 15,000 to, now, over 55,000 lives lost since 2001.

If nothing else, it is a dishonour to the dead and injured to not even be accurately counted among the many who have sacrificed for their country.

Almost as perplexing is the estimate offered by the Foreign Office of the financial losses suffered by the country: $103bn. For some perspective, this is more than a third of the country’s annual GDP.

The $103bn figure only begins to make some kind of sense if investment and economic activity foregone because of militancy is included. But who’s to say whether foreign investment has slowed to a trickle in Pakistan because of militancy and terrorism or because of the energy shortage and business-unfriendly policies of the state?

The apparent laziness with which such figures are produced suggests that the real reason is to demonstrate to the outside world that Pakistan is as much, if not a greater, victim of terrorism than the outside world. The corollary then is that the outside world should do more to compensate Pakistan and to finance the fight against militancy here.

Yet, there is a fundamental problem with that thinking: Pakistan is essentially under attack from Pakistanis who belong to organisations that at some point in their history have either been created, nurtured, sponsored, funded, trained or equipped by the Pakistani state itself.

Clearly, countries such as the US and Saudi Arabia played a role in the genesis of the problem, but it is the Pakistani state itself that has made the choices that have left state and society so vulnerable to militancy and terrorism. To assert this is not to indulge in an endless blame game, but to underline that the country’s policymaking elite are still in denial about both the causes and the necessary policy decisions that have to be made.

Pakistan will only win the fight against militancy if it honestly reckons with the past and moves in the present to shut down the militancy infrastructure and the enabling environment within society. Else, even the exaggerated losses claimed may pale in comparison to the eventual damage.

Published in Dawn, October 4th , 2014