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Azm-e-Istehkam

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No child pages here — short current-affairs notes in the order below.

  • Use inside terrorism answers (CSS 2018 Q5, 2026 Q3).

📺 Directly Relevant YouTube Lecture Sources

📌 Topic Contents

  1. 📖 Overview
  2. 📖 Key Features
  3. 📖 Controversy & Political Reaction
  4. 📖 Context: Rising Threat
  5. 📖 Exam Angle

20-mark technique: frame a thesis; explain causes and consequences; substantiate claims; assess alternative explanations.

Overview

  • "Azm-e-Istehkam" (Resolve for Stability) — comprehensive national counter-terrorism campaign approved by Pakistan's Apex Committee (National Action Plan forum) in June 2024
  • Announced amid resurgence of TTP-linked and ISKP terrorism, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, following the post-Afghan Taliban takeover (Aug 2021) spike in cross-border militancy

Key Features

  • Distinguished from past kinetic-only operations (Zarb-e-Azb 2014, Radd-ul-Fasaad 2017) — framed as a comprehensive, whole-of-nation approach, not purely military
  • Combines: renewed military/intelligence-based operations (IBOs) against militant networks, socio-economic development in affected areas, political reconciliation, and diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan on cross-border militancy
  • Explicitly links internal security to economic revival — terrorism deters investment (esp. CPEC-related)

Controversy & Political Reaction

  • Initial announcement caused public/political confusion — mistakenly perceived by some as a full-scale military operation causing displacement (like Swat 2009); government later clarified it's intelligence-based, not mass displacement-causing
  • KP provincial government (PTI-led at the time) raised objections over lack of consultation — became a federal-provincial friction point
  • Some analysts view it as rebranding of existing NAP/counter-terror efforts rather than a genuinely new strategy

Context: Rising Threat

  • TTP attacks increased sharply post-2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — Pakistan accuses Afghan Taliban of sheltering TTP, denied by Kabul
  • Pakistan has conducted cross-border airstrikes into Afghan territory targeting TTP hideouts, straining Pak-Afghan relations

Exam Angle

  • High-yield current affairs. Link it to:
    1. worsening Pakistan–Afghanistan relations
    2. NAP's implementation gaps
    3. civil-military and federal-provincial coordination problems
  • Likely MCQ: launch year (2024) and its key feature (comprehensive, not only kinetic) compared with earlier operations.