“I DON’T know why foreign hands are visible only to Rehman Malik and the agencies,” asked Akhtar Mengal, the head of the BNP-M, during comments to the media on Saturday. Indeed. It’s the most reliable tool in the oldest playbook here: every time the state struggles to impose control over an area and the local population is alienated, anonymous officials in the orbit of the army-led security establishment start hinting darkly about outside powers stirring up trouble in Pakistan to destabilise the country and/or perhaps dismember it. The first and most direct benefit of this cynical theory is that it takes attention away from the actual problem: in Balochistan, the state’s policy over the decades that has resulted in swathes of the Baloch population never really believing they are wanted inside Pakistan on equal terms with other populations; in Fata, state policy over the last three decades that created an infrastructure for jihad which led to the creation of a fearsome opponent with its guns trained on Pakistan proper; in Gilgit-Baltistan, exploiting sectarian tensions for national goals since the 1980s in a previously largely peaceful area. The list goes on and on.

The legend of the ‘foreign hand’ is greatest when it comes to Balochistan. From Brahmdagh Bugti’s ‘Indian passport’ to detonators and explosives used by Baloch separatists being sourced from Indian or Afghan enemies of Pakistan, the claims have been persistent and extraordinary — and they have never once been officially and publicly proved. The unwillingness to go public with the proof of the allegations is attributed variously to not wanting to endanger intelligence assets or to darker theories about how states play games at unseen levels and exposing them publicly would be counterproductive. Of course, all the while, the actual problem keeps festering. Whether Dr Allah Nazar is an agent of India or Afghanistan is almost beside the point; he was radicalised by what he witnessed happening to his province and what was done to him while under detention by the security apparatus. And the youth of Balochistan who fear and loathe the Pakistani state do so not because of some great love for or support from outside powers but because they have seen the iron fist of the security apparatus brought down on their peers, friends and families.

Throughout history, states have surely tried to take advantage of their opponents’ weaknesses. But the ‘foreign hand’ isn’t the problem in Pakistan; the state’s misguided policies are. Until those policies change, problems will fester and Pakistan’s internal security will remain tenuous.