Terrorism in Pakistan’s border regions poses a strategic threat beyond bilateral issues: Attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan undermine US interests in critical minerals, connectivity to Central Asia, and countering Chinese influence.

Proxy violence creates economic denial: Instability deters Western investment, raises costs, and gives China a comparative advantage in infrastructure, security, and resource projects.

Integrated US-Pakistan cooperation needed: Intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism support, sanctions pressure on the Taliban, and addressing local grievances should be linked to broader goals of stability, transparent mineral governance, and regional connectivity.

Washington continues to see the problem of terrorism in Pakistan’s west as a bilateral Pakistan-Afghanistan affair or as a by-product of attacks more focused on the Chinese projects. That reading is simply a waste of time and is not in the right context. Militants are establishing a region of economic denial in the heart of American counterterrorism, critical-mineral diversification, connectivity to Central Asia and competition with China, in the border region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Proxy warfare does not need to be a battle to win the state, it just needs to be a battle to make investment, transportation and governance too expensive.

The risk is real and imminent: Over the course of July 2026, a surge in attacks and violence in Balochistan claimed 42 lives, mostly of police and security personnel, Pakistani authorities said. Washington should view the borderlands as a whole threat and not each incident as a........

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