But a recent incident in Saravan county in Sistan-Baluchestan, close to the Pakistan border, has also drawn attention to the Iran-Pakistan border region. This has broadened the debate over the Gulf region’s security and evolving geopolitics, and Pakistan’s role in it.

The incident was reported on Sept 12, when heavy fighting between Iranian security forces and unidentified gunmen spread across parts of Saravan, with reports of attacks on military vehicles and dozens of security personnel killed or wounded. Although the identity of the armed group is not yet clear, some analysts have attributed the attack to Jaish al-Adl or the People’s Fighters Front, an alliance of several groups, reportedly including Jaish al-Adl.

Since the start of the conflict in West Asia, Balochistan’s security dynamics have changed. The conflict has altered the operating environment in which an existing insurgency was already functioning.

The BLA and other allied groups have intensified their terrorist activities. The economic blockade announced by these groups has disrupted transportation and halted economic activity, particularly in the mineral sector. The closure of the frontier with Afghanistan and the partial closure of the border with Iran have contributed to the crisis. Taken together, these developments have affected the region’s security, internal political dynamics and geopolitical environment, bringing new risks to the province.

An angle that has largely been overlooked in the broader conflict theatre in this area is the state of affairs along the Pakistan-Iran border, which stretches for around 900 kilometres and where multiple violent religious and nationalist insurgent groups, as well as transnational criminal networks, operate. The border’s porous nature raises further security concerns. According to media reports, Pakistani security institutions had placed Balochistan on high alert because of the possible fallout from the Iran war.

The situation along the Pakistan-Iran border in the broader conflict has been largely overlooked.

The Jan 16, 2024, Iranian strike inside Pakistan, allegedly targeting Jaish al-Adl hideouts, followed by Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes on militant targets in Iran, changed the dynamics of their bilateral relations and prompted greater security cooperation. That cooperation has largely remained intact.

However, the recent Saravan attack has raised questions about how the changing regional environment could affect the future course of frontier security, particularly as Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan remains closed and Iran is an alternative, although very expensive, route for transnational trade.

For Iran, if the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has to concentrate its resources on US and Israeli strikes, the Strait of Hormuz and operations in the Gulf, Sistan-Baluchestan could become a per­ipheral theatre competing for Iranian security resources. Any escalation of tensions betw­een Iran and Pakistan is in neither country’s interest. However, non-state actors always try to find an opportunity in evolving conflicts, especially when wider regional contexts provide them with more meaning and relevance in the conflict theatre.

The BLA and other insurgent groups appear to have viewed the war as an opportunity to escalate their operations, perhaps hoping that they could eventually be considered as potential proxies against Iran, as happened in Syria with America’s partnership with the Syrian Demo­cratic Forces. The SDF was a coalition that included Kurdish armed groups such as the YPG and YPJ, along with Syrian Arab and Assyrian/ Christian elements.

The BLA has also issued a few statements supporting US strikes on Iran. Perhaps the BLA believes it can find meaning in the wider conflict in West Asia. Still, the BLA is missing a point in its calculation: the convergence of US, Pakistani, and Saudi geopolitical and strategic interests will persist in the coming years.

At the same time, Jaish al-Adl and several smaller groups have reportedly sought to broaden their activities against the Quds Force and IRGC. The group remained relatively quiet until Iranian security forces launched an operation against suspected terrorists in Saravan last August, reportedly apprehending several Jaish al-Adl members and killing one. During the operation, security forces said they recovered a significant arsenal of military hardware, including dozens of Kalash­nikov automatic rifles, hand grenades, RPG-7 launchers, around 20 kilograms of C-4 military-grade explosives, 150 rounds of ammunition, and several Starlink satellite internet devices.

The Saravan operation reported last week has since been interpreted in multiple ways, mostly based on assumptions rather than established evidence. One popular theory links the attack to the intensification of Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia.

The incident also occurred while Pakistan was diplomatically engaged with Iran. According to a media report, subsequently denied by Pakistan, Islamabad had conveyed a Saudi message to Tehran asking Iran to restrain the Houthis.

A popular perception in the border region of Balochistan is that if Iran can use the Houthis as a proxy against Saudi Arabia, it must also expect the possibility of a similar reaction from Saudi Arabia. The Sunni militias operating in Sistan-Baluchestan, from Jundullah to the People’s Fighters Front, are said to be proxies of foreign powers including the US and Saudi Arabia. That perception is nurturing new theories. A few of them are critical of Pakistan too.

Whether such perceptions translate into an actual Saudi strategy is another question. But perceptions themselves can influence the behaviour of armed groups and local actors, particularly in a region where terrorist networks, cross-border tribal connections and informal economic networks overlap.

Beyond all the theories surrounding the strategic calculus of West Asia and the prospects of Saudi proxies emerging along the Pakistan-Iran border, one fact remains clear: Pakistan cannot afford further chaos in the border region of Balochistan. Any expansion of the regional conflict in an already fragile security environment could make the country’s internal security dynamics considerably more complex.

The writer is a security analyst.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2026

At least 23, including 17 police personnel and officials, were martyred in this dastardly assault on worshippers. More than 100 were wounded. But police and security forces regrouped quickly and launched a valiant counterassault, eliminating all but two of the attackers within hours of the initial bombing. The remaining two were neutralised in a clean-up operation that extended overnight, supervised by some of the top police and counterterrorism officials, with one holed-up terrorist killed and the other blowing themselves up rather than face the consequences of their actions.

The operation produced considerable acts of courage, not least by the additional inspector-general of the CTD, who was injured by a grenade yet returned to conclude the clean-up.

The nation will mourn the lives lost and pray for those who were injured. The nation will also demand swift justice for those who lost loved ones.

The group which claimed the attack has, by attacking worshippers on what Muslims consider the holiest occasion of the week, not only shown that it observes no ethical limits, but also that it is operating with a single goal: to cause maximum bloodshed and harm.

The Ittehadul Mujahideen, an umbrella organisation of terrorist outfits, is, according to the Jamestown Foundation think tank, believed to operate from safe havens across the border, share intelligence and coordinate attacks with its terrorist factions, and run organised digital campaigns. It has apparently used drone technologies to deadly effect while targeting security forces and installations in the past. As such, it is considered in some circles to be a more serious and sophisticated threat than the TTP. It needs to be treated as such.

The KP police must be better equipped and trained. They are facing an enemy which is increasingly using modern technology to cause bloodshed. They must be supported with the equipment, strategies and technologies they need to effectively limit and counter the constant, deadly threat they face.

Simultaneously, the authorities need to review the approaches being taken to counter violent actors. National policy on counterterrorism requires recalibration and revisiting, especially regarding its diplomatic, political and social aspects, which must be addressed together to secure stable dividends.

Sadly, the public’s attention is so fixated on social, political and economic problems that the terrorism crisis has been pushed to the margins of national discourse. Pakistan must confront these networks with the full force of the state and the law, but cannot do so effectively till its own house is in order.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2026

Their task can be stated in a sentence. The Constitution of Pakistan on paper and the Constitution as it works on the ground are two different documents, and the distance between them is what this generation has to close.

I was 14 when martial law came and a young man when that general died. My generation learnt a dangerous lesson: power does not explain itself. The man who speaks out is transferred; the man who stays quiet is promoted; the judge who insists upon his independence is superseded. Caution, practised long enough, becomes accommodation, and accommodation becomes submission. We learnt to accommodate power.

Our institutions learnt it too. The courts found a doctrine for every occasion: revolutionary legality in 1958, necessity in 1977, validation in 2000. Havel wrote of the greengrocer who displayed a slogan he did not believe because it was safer. Parties became family enterprises; student unions were banned in 1984 and never restored. What we built governs without consent.

Pakistan’s next generation will not be formed by protest. It will be formed by argument, and the place to begin it already exists.

So what must this generation build first? Not a movement. Character.

I have watched men who stood fearlessly at the bar change after reaching the bench. Not suddenly, and not for money. The comfort of office begins quietly to weigh, and each surrender is called realistic. Character is what resists that, and character is built by exposure to lives larger than one’s own. That is what history, literature and poetry are for: to make suffering legible, so that conviction has something to rest upon.

But reading alone will not do it. What is read must be argued about, and the structure for that argument is already built, already funded and sitting idle. It is the university classroom.

Every class, in every discipline, should be run as a small republic, and the argument should be about the discipline itself. Let the law class argue whether a judgement was rightly decided, not merely what it held. Let the medical class argue triage, consent, and who receives the last bed in a public ward. Let the engineering class argue what was built, who paid, and who must live beside it. Let the business class argue what a wage ought to be, and whether a balance sheet that is lawful is therefore honest. Every syllabus buries such questions beneath what is examinable.

Let each class elect its office bearers, for a fixed term and with real duties. Let the elections be contested, and let students lose them, because losing an election and returning next week to sit beside the person who beat you is the most useful hour of civic instruction this country could offer. Let the dissenter be protected by rule, not by the goodwill of the majority. That is how a democratic mind is made: by being outvoted by someone you believe wrong, and having to work beside him afterwards.

Argue any of these questions honestly and it will not remain within its discipline. Ask an engineering class whether the dam should be built. The answer requires a lawyer on water rights, an economist on who bears the cost, a doctor on what happens downstream, and someone who has met the people being moved. A faculty can contain a syllabus; it cannot contain a real question. Memorisation keeps a student inside his discipline; argument drives him out. Debate and multidisciplinary education are not two reforms but one, and the first produces the second.

This is also where the politics lies. Our professions are organised as separate estates: a bar, a medical association, a chamber of commerce. Each can be managed on its own. What cannot be managed is a generation of doctors, engineers, lawyers and accountants who argued with one another at 20 and still take one another’s calls at 40.

Teaching without debate is not education. It is transmission. Education here needs revisiting at its root: less theory recited, more of it tested against the country outside. Take the law class to a district court, the medical class to a public ward at night, the engineering class to the settlement beside the project, the business class to the factory floor. Students must be made to feel Pakistan and its misery, not to read about it.

Imagine the young men and women such an education would prepare. The more grounded they are, the more effective they will be. A generation formed this way will not need to be told to push back against unelected power. It will be too many, too competent and too well connected to be governed without consent.

None of this arrives quickly. It takes two decades, the time between losing a class election at 20 and running a ministry or a court at 40. That is the honest horizon, and why the work must begin now.

Return, then, to the gap. On paper the Constitution is not in doubt: authority exercised through the chosen representatives of the people, rights that power may not violate, public power exercised for the common good. My generation learnt to live inside the distance between that page and this country. Look at what we have brought it to. Closing that distance is the work now left to theirs.

They must learn to hold power to account. It begins in a classroom, with an argument, and an election that somebody loses.

The writer is a former senior puisne judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He holds the Distinguished Chair in Constitutionalism & Justice at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law, Lums, and is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Yale University.

www.justicemansooralishah.com

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2026

Chasing 178, Sri Lanka raced to 178 with 13 balls to spare, with Athapaththu finishing unbeaten on 83 off 50 balls, having struck seven fours and six sixes. Harshitha Samarawickrama was unbeaten on 17.

Pakistan had appeared to set a challenging target after posting 177 for four, with Ayesha Zafar top-scoring with 71 off 40 balls and Shawaal Zulfiqar contributing 54 off 50.

But Sri Lanka’s chase quickly turned into a one-sided affair, led by their captain’s destructive hitting as Pakistan’s bowlers struggled to contain the scoring rate.

It was Pakistan’s second defeat against Sri Lanka in 10 days after the former was knocked out of the recent Women’s Asia Cup as the latter won the tournament’s semi-final.

Sri Lanka later lost to India and may meet the Asian champions again in the final if they beat Bangladesh in the second semi-final of the Games.

The loser of that match will take on Pakistan for the bronze medal encounter on Tuesday, the same day the final is to be played.

Brisk start

Sri Lanka made a brisk start despite opening against spin, with Imesha Dulani taking the attack to Umm-e-Hani. They reached 19 without loss after two overs before a costly third over from Momina Riasat, who conceded two no-balls and a wide.

Fatima provided Pakistan with their first breakthrough in the fifth over, having Dulani bowled for 27 off 21 balls. Sri Lanka were 39 for one at that stage.

Athapaththu, initially watchful, then accelerated spectacularly. She hit Momina for a six, four, six and four in the eighth over to take Sri Lanka to 70 for one.

The Sri Lankan captain continued her assault, striking Nashra Sandhu for two fours and a six in the 10th over. Hasini Perera joined in the acceleration, particularly against Tuba Hassan, and Sri Lanka moved to 121 for one after 13 overs, needing 57 from 42 balls.

Nashra eventually broke the partnership in the following over when Hasini, who had reached 42 off 26 balls with three fours and three sixes, was caught by Umm-e-Hani at cover. Sri Lanka were 131 for two with 47 still required from 36 deliveries.

There was little further resistance from Pakistan.

Athapaththu moved to 65 off 44 balls after Fatima’s return over went for 11, before taking 15 from Umm-e-Hani’s final over, including consecutive sixes.

Sri Lanka were 157 for two after 16 overs and needed only 21 from the final four overs.

Pakistan were also unable to hold on to a chance when Aliya Riaz dropped Athapaththu at long-off off Ayesha Zafar with the batter on 79. Athapaththu hit a four in the same over before completing the chase with two balls of the 18th over remaining.

Ayesha stars

Earlier, Pakistan’s innings had suffered an early setback when opener Gull Feroza was clean bowled by Sugandika Kumari off the second delivery.

Saira Jabeen and Shawaal steadied the innings, but Saira fell for a brisk 17 off 14 balls when Sri Lanka captain Athapaththu had her caught at deep midwicket in the sixth over.

Ayesha then joined Shawaal and took the attack to the Sri Lankan bowlers. The pair added 115 runs, with Ayesha particularly aggressive against the spin.

She reached her half-century off just 27 balls as Pakistan crossed 100 in the 12th over. Ayesha eventually fell for a 40-ball 71, including nine fours and two sixes, when a risky single resulted in a run-out at the bowler’s end in the 17th over.

Shawaal brought up her half-century from 47 balls, having struck three fours and two sixes, but was dismissed for 54 off 50 balls in the following over, caught at deep midwicket after failing to get enough power behind a shot.

Fatima provided the late impetus with an unbeaten 20 off 12 balls, including two fours and a six, while Eyman Fatima struck a four from the final delivery to take Pakistan to 177 for four.

Pakistan’s innings was also helped by several fielding lapses from Sri Lanka, who missed opportunities during the middle overs.

Kumari, Athapaththu and Kawya Kavindi took one wicket apiece for Sri Lanka, with Kumari the most economical of the three, conceding 31 runs from her four overs.