In every conflict, there are two stories: the one that is told and the one that is lived. Wars are remembered for how they are fought, rarely for how they are endured. Yet long after the noise fades, it is the quieter consequences that linger the longest.

It was just the other day, while watching a live graduation ceremony at Columbia University in New York, that a moment unexpectedly revived these reflections. An interview with a young Afghan graduate brought back memories I had long carried. She spoke of her parents and grandparents, of decades shaped by war and of her own difficult journey to reach that proud moment. Her story was not just moving; it felt deeply familiar.

Barely a week later, Quetta was in the news again: another terrorist attack on a train, more innocent lives lost. The images were painful, not only for the devastation they showed, but for what they revealed: violence does not fade when the headlines do; it endures.

These two moments, so close in time, drew me back to the years of the Afghan conflict and its aftermath, years that left deep and lasting imprints far beyond the battlefield. For Pakistan, the war did not remain confined across the border. Its aftershocks seeped into our cities, institutions and daily lives, gradually shifting the burden inward. What began as a distant geopolitical struggle evolved into a lived domestic reality.

I recall that period vividly. Serving as head of a security and counterintelligence unit, our days and nights were consumed by the urgency of a threat that felt both........

© Pakistan Observer