How and why do small groups attack state writ in Pakistan, and get away with it? And why does the state participate in its own denouement? Muhammad Shoaib examines the cyclic nature of Pakistan’s domestic politics, and how it remains in the same position despite passage of time and change of guard.
Ume Hassan (spouse of Maulana Abdul Aziz of Lal Masjid, Islamabad) was arrested on charges of terrorism in February this year. The First Information Report (FIR) charged that she led a group armed with batons and guns and attacked state officials during a dispute over a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. While she and her accomplices were presented before a judge for remand, a government Committee under the supervision of the Secretary Interior (Ministry of Interior, Government of Pakistan) M. Khurram Agha was negotiating with her spouse, the Maulana. The two sides reportedly reached an agreement. Aziz (earlier seen wielding a semi-automatic weapon and threatening law enforcement agencies with dire consequences) agreed that his side would not create a law-and-order situation, let authorities demolish a building under construction (deemed illegal by the government) and avoid postings on social media platforms against the government and state institutions. Expectedly, Ume Hassan was granted bail on 8 March 2025; the judgment stated that she and the accomplices she led were falsely implicated.
A quick rewind to July 2007 brings to attention a similar episode: a military-led regime was negotiating the release of hostages with the same family at the same spot. However, back then, the negotiations had failed.
Between these two similar events (involving state representatives negotiating with family members) in 2007 and 2025, Pakistan has lost more than 65,000 people and US$100 bn; a lot has changed in and outside the country during these 18 years. A military regime negotiated its way out, all three major political parties of the country took turns in government, the number of terrorist incidents waxed and waned, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) challenge was dealt with, isolation in sports was overcome and, more importantly, the US war on terror peaked and ended in neighbouring Afghanistan. What has remained unchanged are the political optics in Islamabad and the results of the state’s efforts to negotiate peace with militant groups, and the apparent ambivalence of state and society in dealing with extremism and militancy.
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The Ume Hassan episode is neither the beginning nor the end. It is only an indicator of ambivalence that has persisted at least since 2007, the year when hell broke loose on the country and its people, the worst of it starting after July 2007 — when negotiations with the same family failed and the military regime then in power launched the Lal Masjid operation.
In the ensuing years, militants attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in the most secure zone of Punjab’s provincial capital Lahore, asserted control over Swat district and briefly implemented their version of the Islamic system, attacked the military’s headquarters in Rawalpindi (all in 2009), besieged the country’s busiest airport and shipyard, targeted political and community leaders, killed people affiliated with the state apparatus, and turned upside down the administrative structure in erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA; now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) — a region that shares its border with Afghanistan. Interestingly, all this happened inside the country when it was a frontline partner in the US-led War on Terror.
However, even during the peak of the conflict, a significant percentage of the population and political leadership did not consider the war on terror as their own battle, rather considered it a ‘foreign’ activity. The one time that appeared as ‘Pakistan’s decisive moment’ in the war against terrorism came in December 2014 when Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) massacred more than 140 people, mostly children, in an attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s capital city. After the attack, the civil–military leadership vowed a ‘clean-up’ for which the government provided financial and constitutional support. But the momentum did not last long. As memories of the massacre faded, the same old voices became louder: ‘War on terror was a foreign war and [hardened] militants were protesting.’
And then came a plan to resettle TTP fighters and their families in Pakistan.
There was some resistance to the ideas and plans for resettlement but that was limited to the intelligentsia and some smaller political parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Most presumably approved the decision as the political party at the forefront of this decision (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) and cheered due to its anti-war stance won an unprecedented electoral victory in the province (2024) after the resettlement initiative. The party leaders proudly called the US–Taliban negotiations the policy prescription that they had recommended all along. To many (across the political spectrum) in the country, victory of the Taliban was a moment of joy. The joyous commentaries and analyses on the US withdrawal in 2021 reflected their sentiments. Many cheered for the Taliban and pointed to their good governance without realising that the Afghan Taliban had not changed. Their support for TTP would not end as a gesture of gratitude to Pakistan.
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On the domestic front, extremism and intolerance skyrocketed and spread across the country. Trust in state institutions plummeted and mob justice — often ending in horrific public lynchings of individuals — became common. Asif’s (2022) research shows that these events ‘strengthened the clientelistic interdependency networks of these religious-political leaders’. Conversely, Badrinathan, Chauchard & Siddiqui’s (2024) study showed that despite its horrific nature, vigilantism (ultimately leading to mob violence and deaths) received popular support. These works reflect the trends of the last decade: minorities suffered from unprecedented levels of harassment and prosecution in such cases remained startlingly low, which in turn emboldened the vigilantes and perpetrators.
Amid this multi-front backsliding, political leaders avoided taking clear positions on the question of minorities, vigilantes and vigilantism, and extremism and militancy. The mainstream political parties instead contended on passing the buck.
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What happened is Islamabad with Ume Hassan should therefore not alarm observers. Seeing the repeat of 2007 in 2025 only affirms the country’s cyclic journey. How could small groups take up arms and decide to challenge state writ at will? How could groups demolish buildings and lynch individuals in a nuclear-armed state with virtually no resistance? How and why does state and society — going through so many painful years and suffering from the worst forms of violence — not reject extremism and militancy in all forms?
The answer perhaps lies as much in capacity as in clarity, willingness and consistency of the stakeholders.
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Banner image © Thomas Bormans, Unsplash, 2020.
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