Pakistan is grappling with an alarming surge of violence along ethnic and sectarian lines. On February 6, 2026, a suicide bombing during Friday prayers at the Khadija al-Kubra Imambargah in Islamabad killed at least 31 people and wounded 169 others. The attack followed a series of violent incidents across the country, including coordinated offensives by separatist groups in Balochistan earlier this year that reportedly resulted in dozens of deaths among civilians and security personnel, and hundreds of casualties during subsequent counter-operations, with both sides claiming heavy losses. Only a few months earlier, in November 2025, another suicide bombing outside the District and Sessions Court in Islamabad’s G-11 sector killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more, underscoring that even major urban centers are no longer insulated from such violence.
At first glance, these incidents may appear to be isolated security failures. A closer examination, however, suggests a deeper structural problem: a state that defines its political identity through religion and privileges particular sectarian narratives has contributed to the conditions that allow such violence to persist, even as it claims to combat it.
Historically, ruling elites have frequently instrumentalized religion to consolidate power, mobilize emotions, and suppress dissent. In Pakistan, this pattern has been widely documented. During the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, militant groups were cultivated as strategic assets. Over time, these actors became embedded within the country’s political and social landscape. The long-term consequences are visible today in the persistence of sectarian militancy—once dominated by Deobandi outfits and now joined by newer movements such as the Barelvi-based Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), which mobilizes supporters through inflammatory blasphemy rhetoric.
This reliance on religious actors has not been confined to foreign or security policy; it has repeatedly surfaced in domestic political engineering. Extremist groups have been used, implicitly or explicitly, to pressure elected governments, most notably during the TLP-led Faizabad sit-in. Political parties, too, have entered tactical alliances with religious movements. The 2014 protests against the Nawaz Sharif government, led jointly by Imran Khan’s PTI and Tahir-ul-Qadri, demonstrated how religious mobilization could be harnessed to destabilize civilian rule. Later, while in power, the PTI government pursued negotiations and rehabilitation initiatives with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a policy critics argue emboldened the group and blurred the boundaries of counterterrorism strategy.
Though sectarian violence and ethnic insurgency are often treated as separate phenomena, the state’s response to both follows a similar ideological logic. In Balochistan, political dissent and rights-based movements are frequently framed as foreign-sponsored conspiracies—often attributed to India and, at times, Israel—against the Islamic Republic. This narrative recasts political and economic grievances as existential threats to faith. As a result, demands for representation, resources, or justice are delegitimized and transformed into security problems, justifying military crackdowns and prolonged social exclusion.
In a polity where religious identity is central to state legitimacy, and where certain sectarian interpretations wield disproportionate influence within military, political, and bureaucratic institutions, sectarian violence becomes structurally enabled rather than incidental. Extremist groups exploit these divisions, portraying themselves as defenders of Islam while casting minorities as enemies or apostates. State rhetoric that conflates dissent with religious betrayal inadvertently provides ideological cover for such actors, facilitating recruitment and entrenchment. Political marginalization thus mutates into violent sectarian conflict.
The concentration of power within networks aligned with the Sunni majority further compounds this crisis. Policy formation, law enforcement priorities, and public discourse often reflect these asymmetries, reinforcing perceptions of partiality. For minorities and marginalized ethnic groups, exclusion is not only political but also cultural and symbolic, producing deep grievances that can erupt into violence.
This reveals a fundamental contradiction. How can sectarian violence be meaningfully addressed in a state that defines itself through religion, privileges particular sectarian narratives, and frames internal dissent as a threat to faith? The uncomfortable answer is that it cannot—unless the ideological framework of governance itself is reconsidered. Sustainable solutions require more than force or rhetoric. Citizenship must take precedence over sect, law over ideology, and political inclusion over coercion. Grievances rooted in inequality and exclusion must be addressed politically, not reframed as religious wars or foreign conspiracies.
Defenders of the status quo often argue that Pakistan’s religious identity is essential for national cohesion. Yet decades of bloodshed suggest the opposite: enforced ideological unity has produced fragmentation, radicalization, and institutional distrust. In attempting to protect the Islamic state, the state has frequently undermined its own stability, entrenching the very extremism it seeks to defeat.
Pakistan’s crisis, then, is not merely a failure of security or intelligence. It is the outcome of a governance model that explains dissent through religion, weaponizes identity for control, and privileges some citizens over others. Until this framework is challenged, sectarian violence will not disappear—it will evolve, deepen, and continue to shape the country’s future. A state that views its own citizens through the prism of faith will inevitably reproduce the violence it claims to oppose.
