The first week of October has brought a steady run of reports from Pakistan’s counterterrorism campaign. Security sources said that on Oct 3, five militants of Fitna al-Khawarij, the state’s term for the banned TTP, were killed in South Waziristan. The next day, an intelligence-based operation in Dera Ismail Khan reportedly killed eight, including three commanders. On Oct 6, five more were killed in North Waziristan, and on Oct 7, 13 were reported killed there. In Balochistan, operations under Radd-ul-Fitna 3 reportedly killed six Fitna al-Hindustan militants in Kachhi on Oct 1 and five more in Mastung on Oct 7. The prime minister has said operations will continue until terrorism is completely eradicated.
These figures come from official and security sources and cannot be independently verified. The pattern is nonetheless consistent. The campaign is persistent, intelligence-led and spread across two provinces, and it is running under the Azm-e-Istehkam vision. It is also costly. On Sept 17, six security personnel were martyred when an IED detonated during an operation, and the ISPR linked the militants to Indian support. The state’s loss is measured in its soldiers and police as well as in the militants it reports killing.
Diplomacy came first
Pakistan did not reach for force first on the Afghan front. It accepted a Doha ceasefire in October 2025 under Qatari and Turkish mediation and then took part in several rounds in Istanbul. Its delegation reportedly presented documents and photographs to show that TTP and BLA leaders live in Afghanistan, and it asked for a written, verifiable commitment that Afghan soil would not be used against Pakistan. Reports suggest Kabul privately acknowledged the TTP problem but would not act on it.
That context matters for the strike of Oct 1. According to Pakistani security sources, it hit a compound in Garmser, Helmand, that housed a BLA media operations centre, killing nine militants. The same sources say the compound belonged to a Taliban Border Force commander. Civilian casualties were also reported, and they deserve scrutiny. But the underlying question remains with Kabul: why was a media operation of a group Pakistan, the US and others have designated a terrorist organisation functioning on territory the Taliban control?
The limits of force
Operations can destroy hideouts, but they cannot settle who speaks for the faith. The militants who attack police stations, markets and army convoys do not call themselves terrorists. They claim religious sanction, and that claim has to be defeated as an argument as well as on the ground.
That is where the scholarship matters. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Dehshatgardi aur Fitna al-Khawarij, published in 2010, anticipated this debate. The book was written years before the state adopted the term Fitna al-Khawarij, when the argument over religious justification for violence was already under way in Pakistan. Drawing on classical authorities such as Imam Shahrastani, Imam Nawawi, Ibn Taymiyyah and Hafiz Ibn Hajar, it argues that the defining marks of the Khawarij were armed rebellion against lawful authority, takfir of fellow Muslims and the declaration of Muslim blood and property as lawful.
What the Quran says
The book begins with the Quran’s description of the Muslim community as a community of the middle path, and holds that any group that abandons that balance moves just as far from the spirit of Islam. It then gathers verses that classical commentators read as pointing to the Khawarij. The book presents these as interpretive readings, and they should be read that way. Two of them stand out.
The first is the verse on those who pursue the ambiguous parts of scripture:
هُوَ الَّذِي أَنزَلَ عَلَيْكَ الْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ آيَاتٌ مُّحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ الْكِتَابِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ ۖ فَأَمَّا الَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ابْتِغَاءَ الْفِتْنَةِ وَابْتِغَاءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ
It is He who has sent down to you the Book, in which some verses are clear and form its core, while others are open to more than one meaning. As for those with deviation in their hearts, they follow what is ambiguous in it, seeking discord and seeking to interpret it their own way. (Al-Imran 3:7)
The book cites Ibn Abi Hatim and Ibn Kathir in reporting from Abu Umamah that the Prophet identified these people as the Khawarij. The point goes beyond one historical group. Militant movements take a handful of verses out of context, ignore the clear and settled teaching around them and build a doctrine of killing on the result.
The second is the verse on waging war and spreading corruption:
إِنَّمَا جَزَاءُ الَّذِينَ يُحَارِبُونَ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَيَسْعَوْنَ فِي الْأَرْضِ فَسَادًا أَن يُقَتَّلُوا أَوْ يُصَلَّبُوا
The recompense of those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to spread corruption in the land is that they be killed or crucified… (Al-Ma’idah 5:33)
The verse continues with further penalties. The book cites Ibn Abbas as saying that whoever takes up arms against a Muslim population and makes the roads unsafe through terror falls within the ruler’s authority to punish according to law. It adds that Imam Baghawi and Qazi Sanaullah Panipati include in the verse’s ruling those who terrorise towns and rise in armed revolt on a false interpretation. This places the response to such violence with the lawful authority of the state, and not with self-appointed groups.
What they believed, and how they thought
The book counts six main groups of Khawarij and about twenty sub-sects, and it describes a consistent set of beliefs. They held armed revolt against a ruler to be an obligation whenever he departed from what they considered the Sunnah. They declared anyone who committed a major sin to be an unbeliever condemned to hell forever. They branded Uthman, Ali and the Companions who accepted the arbitration as unbelievers. They treated the blood, property and women of other Muslims as lawful, and, according to the beliefs attributed to Najda ibn Amir, considered even those who simply refused to fight alongside them to be unbelievers. They also regarded Muslim lands outside their own stronghold as lands of war. Anyone who has followed the rhetoric of the TTP and its affiliates will recognise this pattern.
The book is just as attentive to their mindset. The Khawarij were outwardly strict in prayer, fasting, asceticism and recitation of the Quran, but lacked religious wisdom and insight. Their devotion fed pride, and they came to see themselves as the sole bearers of truth and other Muslims as polytheists. When Ali sent Qays ibn Sa’d and Abu Ayyub al-Ansari to negotiate, they rejected every offer of peace. Ali described their state of mind by saying that if one slaughtered even a chicken on such a false notion, it would be a grave sin before God, so how great is the sin of killing a human being whose blood God has made sacred. The book says the same cruelty led Abdul Rahman ibn Muljim to assassinate Ali. The Prophet’s own warning, quoted from Bukhari and Muslim, was that their prayers and fasting would make ordinary believers seem small, and that they would recite the Quran without it going beyond their throats.
This is the mindset a militant recruiter cultivates today: certainty, contempt for other Muslims and a belief that killing is service. It is also why the fight cannot rely on force alone.
What the state should do
The ideological front needs the same sustained effort as the military one. The history and doctrine of takfir, and the classical consensus against it, should be taught in schools and seminaries and not left to militant recruiters. Religious scholars across sects should speak plainly and repeatedly, and the state should back them without trying to script them. Operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan also depend on coordination between federal and provincial authorities and on trust among the communities in the affected districts. Without that trust, every cleared hideout risks being reoccupied.
The two fronts
Pakistan’s martyrs, soldiers and police are not dying for a slogan. They are defending a society against people who have declared that society’s blood is lawful. The military campaign will continue, as it must, and the state should keep pressing Kabul to deny sanctuary to those who plan attacks from its soil. But if the recruiter’s argument holds, every hideout destroyed is replaced. The Khawarij of history were beaten at Nahrawan. Yet, the tradition kept warning that such groups would return in new forms, because the temptation of certainty does not die with its carriers. The answer is to confront with force those who carry weapons, to refute with knowledge those who justify them, and to show young people that real faith is measured by mercy, restraint and respect for human life.
