By Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former Press Attaché to Malaysia
Former MD, SRBC | Michigan, USA
Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz’s statement that Punjab faces a greater security threat from adjoining Pakistani provinces than from neighbouring countries is far more consequential than an ordinary observation about law and order. By arguing that terrorism, organised crime and other threats enter Punjab through its inter-provincial boundaries, she has introduced a disturbing dimension into Pakistan’s security discourse.
Pakistan’s provinces are components of one federation, not independent territories confronting one another across hostile frontiers. Any suggestion that one province must view the others principally through the prism of security risks transforming an administrative challenge into a dangerous political and national question.
The implications become even more serious when her argument is followed to its logical conclusion. If Punjab is being portrayed as relatively peaceful, secure and progressive while terrorism, crime and instability are flowing towards it from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh or other Pakistani territories, responsibility cannot simply end at those provincial boundaries. It raises questions about the provincial administrations, the federal government, the bureaucracy and the national security institutions responsible for maintaining order throughout Pakistan. In that sense, the statement inadvertently casts doubt on the performance of the entire governmental structure outside Punjab.
That inference reaches directly to the federal government headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Maryam Nawaz’s uncle and a leader of the same political party. Islamabad possesses federal law-enforcement bodies, intelligence agencies and counterterrorism institutions, while national security remains inseparable from the responsibilities of the state.
If neighbouring provinces have deteriorated to such an extent that they constitute a greater danger to Punjab than foreign countries, the federal government cannot escape the resulting question: why has it failed to prevent those territories from becoming conduits for terrorism, organised crime and instability?
The greater danger, however, lies not in the immediate controversy but in the precedent it can establish. If Punjab begins defining its internal problems by pointing towards neighbouring provinces, those provinces can employ exactly the same reasoning against Punjab.
Sindh can revive complaints about economic concentration and control over national decision-making. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can raise questions about resources, security policies and the enormous price it has paid for wars against terrorism. Balochistan can respond with grievances concerning natural resources, political representation, military operations and missing persons. Once provincial blame becomes politically legitimate, Pakistan possesses enough unresolved historical grievances to sustain that argument indefinitely.
Punjab itself could then become the target of precisely the kind of collective attribution now being generated by this controversy. Critics elsewhere could begin identifying the provincial origins of military officers, senior bureaucrats, politicians or business interests and attributing institutional decisions to Punjab as a whole.
They could revisit disputes over wheat movement, agricultural commodities, water distribution, federal resources or economic policy and portray them as deliberate acts by one province against another. Such reasoning would be profoundly unfair, but that is exactly why political leaders must not legitimise the principle of collective provincial responsibility in the first place.
Pakistan cannot afford such a blame game. The Pakistan Army is a national institution and cannot be reduced to the provincial origins of individual officers or soldiers. Federal institutions belong equally to every Pakistani.
Likewise, terrorists operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa do not represent its people; criminal gangs in Sindh do not represent Sindhis; and militants operating in Balochistan do not speak for Baloch citizens. Once governments abandon these distinctions, individual criminality becomes provincial guilt, administrative disagreements acquire ethnic identities, and national institutions themselves become vulnerable to dangerous provincial interpretations.
There is also a basic question of governmental responsibility. If terrorism enters Punjab, the Punjab government has every right to strengthen checkpoints, improve intelligence, deploy technology and demand cooperation from neighbouring administrations.
Maryam Nawaz has every right to highlight improvements made under her administration. Punjab has invested in surveillance technology, policing, infrastructure and digitally enabled governance, and a chief minister naturally wants to demonstrate the effectiveness of those initiatives.
But Punjab’s achievements require no comparison that diminishes other provinces. The strongest demonstration of successful governance would be for Punjab to use its resources and experience to strengthen national coordination, share technology and intelligence, and help create security systems capable of operating seamlessly across provincial boundaries.
Pakistan was conceived as a federation whose constituent units possess different histories, languages, cultures, resources and political experiences but share a common national destiny.
Punjab’s prosperity cannot ultimately be insulated from instability in Balochistan, terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or economic distress in Sindh. Karachi’s economic strength benefits Lahore; Punjab’s agricultural production feeds the country; Balochistan’s resources and strategic geography serve national interests; and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s security protects Pakistan’s western approaches. Treating these interdependencies as vulnerabilities rather than strengths misunderstands the very structure of the federation.
Pakistan’s history should make its leaders particularly cautious about rhetoric that accentuates provincial alienation. The country has already experienced the catastrophic consequences of allowing political grievances, unequal treatment and regional distrust to overwhelm a common national identity.
The lesson of that history is not that provincial differences should be suppressed, but that they must be addressed through dignity, constitutional equality, equitable development and political accommodation. A federation becomes stronger when its constituent units believe that another province’s progress adds to their own rather than occurring at their expense.
The appropriate response to Maryam Nawaz’s statement, therefore, is not an equally provocative response from Sindh, Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That would merely accelerate the cycle this editorial warns against.
Political leaders across Pakistan should instead reaffirm that terrorists cannot be assigned a provincial character and that security cannot be achieved by shifting responsibility across Pakistan’s internal boundaries. Militants, smugglers and organised criminals must be identified as individuals and networks, pursued wherever they operate and confronted through coordinated national institutions rather than converted into symbols of entire populations.
The real question is consequently not which province exports terrorism, crime or instability to another. The question is why Pakistan’s collective administrative and security machinery allows these threats to survive, move, finance themselves and cross jurisdictions in the first place.
That question belongs equally to provincial governments, Islamabad, law-enforcement agencies and the national security establishment. Accountability should travel upward towards institutions entrusted with authority, not outward towards millions of citizens who happen to live on the other side of an administrative boundary.
Maryam Nawaz’s remarks should therefore become an opportunity to correct the direction of the debate rather than deepen it. Punjab’s security is inseparable from peace in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, stability in Balochistan, prosperity in Sindh and cohesion throughout Pakistan.
No province can permanently protect itself from the difficulties of another because Pakistan’s economy, security and political future are interconnected. Provincial governments may compete in performance, investment and service delivery, but they must never compete in assigning collective guilt.
Pakistan has international borders that must be defended and provincial boundaries that must be administered. Confusing the political meaning of the two is dangerous. The country needs stronger intelligence sharing, better policing, equitable development, accountable government and deeper cooperation among its constituent units—not psychological walls between them.
Every Pakistani province must be able to regard the progress of another as a national achievement and its suffering as a national responsibility. The moment Pakistan’s provinces begin treating one another as threats, the terrorists and extremists who seek to fracture the country will have achieved something they could never accomplish on their own.
