A suicide vehicle bomb that tore through a mosque inside the Old Police Lines compound in Kohat district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing dozens of police officers and civilians and injuring more than 100 others, is the foreseeable outcome of decades of Pakistani security policy that treated jihadist networks as strategic assets rather than existential threats, according to a detailed analysis published by Khalsa Vox.

A Policy of Strategic Tolerance, Turned Inward

For decades, according to the report, Pakistan's security establishment drew a distinction between so-called 'good' and 'bad' militants — sheltering, funding, or at minimum tolerating groups that could be weaponised against India or deployed in Afghanistan. The networks that trained fighters, moved them across the Durand Line, and sustained jihadist logistics were never fully dismantled. When the Afghan Taliban completed its takeover in 2021, those same networks gained expanded operational space — sanctuary, weapons, and ideological reinforcement on Afghan soil.

The consequence, the analysis argues, is that Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and allied commanders — including Hafiz Gul Bahadur — reconstituted themselves under that cover. Islamabad, the report notes, now publicly decries cross-border sanctuary while continuing to favour factions it once actively cultivated.

What the Kohat Attack Reveals

'The target was not an Indian consulate or a Western embassy. It was Pakistani policemen at prayer, inside a police compound, in a city that is supposed to be under state control,' the Khalsa Vox analysis stated. The method — an explosives-laden vehicle followed by a further assault — demands planning, reconnaissance, explosives procurement, and local facilitation. 'Those capabilities do not appear overnight. They are the residue of an ecosystem Pakistan allowed to persist because it was useful against someone else,' it added.

Militant violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has surged since 2021, with attacks increasingly directed at police and military installations rather than being limited to remote frontier checkpoints, the report noted. Responsibility is being claimed by coalitions of former TTP commanders, remnants of Lashkar-e-Islam, and other groups that once benefited from varying degrees of state tolerance.

The 'Fitna al-Khawarij' Framing and Its Limits

Official Pakistani rhetoric has leaned on the designation 'Fitna al-Khawarij' — the term Islamabad applies to the TTP — rather than confronting a deeper structural reality: that the state helped nurture a militant ecosystem it can no longer fully control, the analysis argued. Critics say the framing is a rhetorical device that sidesteps accountability for the tolerance that enabled the ecosystem to grow.

Blame Kabul — But Only So Far

'Blaming Kabul is convenient and only partly true,' the report stated. Cross-border movement and Afghan-origin attackers are real factors. 'They do not explain why a mosque inside a police line in Kohat could be reached by a car bomb in the first place. That is a failure of intelligence, perimeter security, and political will inside Pakistan,' it argued. The analysis concluded that a state which spent years treating some jihadists as assets cannot credibly demand that every jihadist treat it as off-limits.

A Pattern, Not an Aberration

The Kohat attack is not an isolated event but a data point in a worsening trend, the report emphasised. Security analysts have for years warned that selective counter-terrorism — targeting only those groups that turn their guns inward — creates a permissive environment in which militant infrastructure inevitably regenerates. With attacks on police and military targets rising across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan faces a reckoning over whether it can sustain a security doctrine built on distinguishing between friend and foe within the jihadist ecosystem. How Islamabad responds — rhetorically and operationally — will define the trajectory of internal security in the country's northwest for years to come.