A state does not collapse when a militant seizes a police station. It begins to collapse when ordinary citizens stop believing the state can protect them. That is the uncomfortable question Maulana Fazlur Rehman has placed before Pakistan. Speaking in Parliament, the JUI-F chief described parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan where the state’s authority has, in his words, been severely weakened. His warning may be politically inconvenient, but the right response to an uncomfortable claim is not outrage. It is verification. If even part of his description reflects reality, Pakistan is confronting something deeper than another wave of terrorism. It is confronting the slow retreat of the state itself.
The broader security picture gives that warning added weight. In 2025, Pakistan recorded 1,045 terrorist incidents and 1,139 terrorism-related deaths, making it the world’s most terrorism-affected country in the 2026 Global Terrorism Index. The violence has intensified further in 2026, with KP and Balochistan remaining the principal theatres. These figures do not, by themselves, prove Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s claim about the weakening of state authority. But they reveal the environment in which that warning must be examined. The real question is no longer simply how many attacks Pakistan can withstand, but how far the state can still reach the citizen when violence becomes persistent and authority is repeatedly challenged.
Military force is indispensable when the state faces armed groups. No government can surrender territory to militants in the name of political accommodation. But military action, however necessary, cannot by itself eliminate the conditions that allow militancy to return. Fighters can be killed, networks dismantled and territory cleared, yet the challenge can re-emerge if the state fails to provide security, justice, representation and effective governance. This is where Pakistan’s problem becomes fundamentally political. Security operations may suppress violence, but only a state that is more capable, more legitimate and more present in people’s daily lives can make that authority durable.
The challenge is especially acute in KP and Balochistan, where generations have lived through war, displacement, militancy and counterterrorism operations, while grievances over political representation, resources, development and state authority have accumulated over decades. When citizens encounter the state mainly through security operations but experience little effective governance in their daily lives, the distance between citizen and state becomes dangerously wide. That is the space in which insurgencies find room to grow, distrust takes root and armed groups can exploit the perception that the state is absent, ineffective or indifferent. The danger, therefore, is not only that militants challenge the state by force, but that prolonged failure of governance can gradually weaken the public confidence on which state authority ultimately rests.
The answer, therefore, cannot be another operation followed by another, nor another committee or press conference insisting that everything is under control. The state must restore the ordinary meaning of government. Schools must open safely, doctors must reach hospitals, traders must travel, farmers must reach their fields and police officers must enforce the law without negotiating with armed groups. Above all, citizens must know that when they call the state for protection, the state will come. That is what writ means, not an abstract constitutional phrase, but the everyday experience of effective government.This also matters to the debate over new provinces. Administrative reorganisation may improve representation and service delivery, but it cannot substitute for functioning government. A new map cannot repair a broken chain of command, nor can a new capital restore public confidence. The more fundamental question is where the state is present, and where it is absent.
That question requires evidence, not assurances, district by district, tehsil by tehsil and, where necessary, village by village. The government should know where police stations function, civilians can travel safely, courts remain accessible, schools and hospitals operate normally, and officials can perform their duties without extraordinary security. A modern state should not fear such questions; it should fear not having the answers. Knowing the limits of its own reach is the first step towards restoring it.
Balochistan, however, presents an even more complicated test. Militant attacks on roads, economic activity and Chinese interests threaten not only security but the province’s prospects for connectivity and investment. At the same time, unverified claims that an alleged “Republic of Balochistan” controls 85 per cent of the province have circulated online. Such claims should neither be amplified nor casually dismissed. A serious state must separate propaganda from reality while confronting the grievances and security failures that give such narratives traction.
Pakistan does not need comforting descriptions of reality. It needs the courage to confront an uncomfortable one. Maulana Fazlur Rehman may be politically controversial, but his warning should be judged by what is happening on the ground, not by who delivers it. Sometimes, telling the state an uncomfortable truth is an act of patriotism. The real danger is not that someone says the writ of the state is weakening, but that the state becomes more offended by the warning than alarmed by the reality behind it. Pakistan does not need another argument over who is to blame. It needs the state to return to places where its absence has become normal, because the true measure of sovereignty is not what a government claims from Islamabad, but what an ordinary citizen can safely experience in his own village. A state is truly sovereign not when it can announce its authority, but when its citizens can feel it.
—The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.
