When the twin towers fell in September 2001, terrorism ceased to be a distant menace and became the defining threat of a generation. Capitals across the globe tightened their airports, rewrote their laws and debated the danger from the safety of committee rooms. Pakistan had no such luxury. While much of the world discussed terrorism, Pakistan fought it street by street, valley by valley, on the front foot and largely alone. From the liberation of Swat in Operation Rah-e-Rast to the clearing of North Waziristan under Zarb-e-Azb and the nationwide sweep of Radd-ul-Fasaad, the country took the battle to the militants rather than waiting for them at its doorstep. The cost has been staggering. The children of Army Public School Peshawar, the worshippers of Quetta and the shopkeepers of Lahore all paid with their lives. More than 90,000 Pakistanis have been martyred and over $100 billion lost, a toll no other nation can match. This was precisely the point made at a recent conference on Pakistan's Evolving Counterterrorism Landscape: TTP, Cross-Border Threats and Regional Security, where a senior official observed that in Pakistan, counterterrorism is not simply a policy debate, but a continuous story of sacrifice and valour.

Yet terrorism, which the world insists has no religion, has acquired an address. For the past five years, that address has been Afghanistan. UN and independent assessments place more than........

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