Pakistan is only killing terrorists not their ideology

Militancy in Pakistan is not just a concern for Pakistan, but for the entire region including India. Pakistan has claimed that it has undertaken a series of successful counter terrorism measures in the past year or so and even brought down terrorist violence by 50 per cent.

However, the recent Bacha Khan University attack once puts the spotlight back on Pakistan and questions need to be asked if the threat militancy has really died down in that country.

Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh will have to work together as in the days to come the threat perception from terrorist groups especially the ISIS are bound to increase.

The ISIS will not only threaten the region, but will also engage in a battle for supremacy with other terrorist outfits such as the Taliban, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayiba.

Pakistan needs to kill ideology:

Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, says that while Pakistan has been killing off terrorists, it has not managed to kill the ideology as a result of which the problem continues to persist.

Kugelman writes in the CNN that, Pakistan may be killing off terrorists on the battlefield, but it has not killed off the ideology that fuels them.

Indeed, the reality is that the Pakistani state has failed to craft a counter-narrative to combat the hardline rhetoric deeply entrenched in Pakistani society.

This ideology emphasizes themes of Islam being under siege, and of India and the United States as being responsible for Pakistan's afflictions.

It is propagated by religious leaders, parroted by wildly popular television news anchors, and published in school textbooks.

In addition, this hardline ideology is deeply conspiratorial. So it's little wonder that in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Bacha Khan University, some prominent Pakistani media personalities and even former government officials suggested that India and a broader "international conspiracy" were responsible for the tragedy.

Combating extremist ideologies is a tall order under any circumstances, and even more so in Pakistan, where the security establishment has a long history of harboring links to terror groups, such as the Haqqani Network, Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

These are groups that don't stage attacks inside Pakistan, and Pakistan's much-ballyhooed military operation in North Waziristan has spared these organizations, which are regarded as strategic assets that can be unleashed against archenemy India and its interests in Afghanistan.

The North Waziristan operation targets only those groups, such as the Pakistani Taliban -- the likely perpetrator of the Bacha Khan University attack -- that do target Pakistan.

But by applying a selective policy to militant groups, Pakistan is playing with fire. These groups are all cut from the same ideological cloth, and in many cases -- particularly those involving the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban -- they often collaborate operationally.