Pakistan's Changing Security Paradigm: National Security, Governance and Counterterrorism

KEY TAKEAWAYS

01 Pakistan’s security paradigm is entering a new phase, from managing threats to preventing them.

02 Military operations have weakened terrorist networks, but cannot by themselves fix weak institutions, unemployment, or governance gaps.

03 The National Security Policy (2022–2026) broadens the definition of security, but offers little operational guidance on implementation (see Table 2).

04 The 2024 National Prevention of Violent Extremism (NPVE) Policy gives Pakistan a prevention framework on paper, but it remains poorly synergized with the NSP and under-resourced at the provincial level.

05 Governance is the missing link: institutional resilience, not just military strength, determines long-term security.

06 The brief proposes six strategic priorities for moving from security management to security governance, including a whole-of-society prevention architecture (see Tables 3 and 4).

Introduction:

The nature of national security has changed fundamentally. Territorial integrity and military preparedness remain essential responsibilities of the state, but they are no longer enough on their own. Globalization, transnational terrorism, technological disruption, cyber warfare, economic interdependence, climate change, pandemics, and irregular migration have all pushed the meaning of security well beyond conventional military threats. A state’s resilience today depends as much on the strength of its institutions, the legitimacy of its governance, and the health of its economy as it does on its capacity to defend its borders and, ultimately, on whether citizens still trust the institutions that govern them.

Pakistan illustrates this shift clearly. Since independence, its strategic outlook has been shaped mainly by interstate rivalry, territorial disputes, and geopolitical competition in South Asia, so national security was understood largely in terms of military capability, deterrence, and external defense. That changed with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, and then more dramatically with 9/11 in 2001. Pakistan’s participation in the Global War on Terror turned internal militancy into the country’s foremost security challenge. Terrorist violence spread across the country, striking civilians, security forces, schools, places of worship, and public infrastructure, and internal insecurity became impossible to separate from regional instability, particularly developments in Afghanistan (see Figure 1).

Pakistan’s response has been costly, at times muddled, but persistent. Thousands of civilians and members of the armed forces lost their lives fighting terrorism, and the economy absorbed enormous financial losses and social disruption. Successive military operations weakened terrorist organizations significantly and restored state authority over areas that had slipped beyond government control; real achievements by any measure. Yet Pakistan’s experience also shows the limits of an approach built mainly around kinetic operations. Military force can dismantle terrorist networks, reclaim territory, and disrupt organized violence, but it cannot by itself remove the conditions that let extremism persist or return. Weak institutions, uneven development, poor educational opportunities, youth unemployment, governance gaps, ideological polarization, and a weak civilian law-enforcement system continue to erode the durability of security gains. The resurgence of terrorist violence after 2021 makes this point hard to ignore, and strengthens the case for a broader understanding of national security.

Figure 1. Terrorism-related deaths in Pakistan rose for a sixth consecutive year in 2025, the sharpest annual increase in a decade; Pakistan topped the Global Terrorism Index for the first time in the 2026 edition, which is based on 2025 data.

Source: Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2022–2026, Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), as reported by Dawn and Vision of Humanity.

Pakistan’s National Security Policy (2022–2026) grew out of recognition of these changing realities; the country’s first real attempt to set out an integrated vision of national security. The Policy rightly treats economic resilience, human development, social cohesion, and institutional effectiveness as indispensable components of national power, marking an important shift away from a narrowly state-centric view of security toward one that links economic development with national security.

But conceptual innovation on its own is not enough; it has to be matched by institutional change. The Policy broadens Pakistan’s understanding of security, yet it leaves a central question unanswered: how should the state organize itself to address terrorism and violent extremism in an increasingly complex regional environment? The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the resurgence of the TTP, shifting patterns of great-power competition, technological change, and continuing economic uncertainty all call for a more integrated, operational approach than the Policy currently offers.

Pakistan’s security paradigm is entering a new phase. Its future security will depend less on maintaining military superiority over terrorist organizations, and more on building institutions that can adapt to changing threats, coordinate across sectors, and earn public confidence in the state.

Counterterrorism, then, should be understood not as an isolated security function but as a national governance challenge; one that requires coherent leadership, institutional resilience, and sustained political commitment.

The discussion that follows traces the evolution of Pakistan’s threat perceptions and security environment, then turns to a critical assessment of the National Security Policy (2022–2026) — its conceptual achievements as well as its operational limitations. It closes by setting out the essential elements of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy meant to strengthen Pakistan’s institutional resilience while advancing the wider goals of national security, economic stability, and democratic governance. For more download the Policy Brief