Peshawar, Pakistan, Pakistan’s internal terror network turned inward again on Monday, when a coordinated suicide bombing struck the headquarters of the Federal Constabulary (FC) in Peshawar’s Cantonment area, killing at least six people and injuring several others.
The attack began with a suicide bomber detonating explosives at the main gate of the heavily guarded FC compound on Sunehri Masjid Road. Following the blast, two armed attackers entered the premises and engaged Pakistani forces in a gunfight before being gunned down.
The group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), part of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) network, claimed responsibility.
Though Pakistani authorities officially claimed six deaths, including three soldiers, but Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) asserted that the assault caused over two dozen casualties and the death of three of its own fighters, suggesting the toll could be much higher than Islamabad acknowledges, consistent with Pakistan’s long history of concealing the true scale of such attacks.
Peshawar police officer Mian Saeed Ahmad said three soldiers were killed instantly at the gate, crediting the “swift response” of security forces for averting greater loss — though the fact that heavily armed militants could breach a paramilitary headquarters raises severe questions about Pakistan’s so-called “counterterror” capacity.
Pakistan’s terror complex imploding inward
The Peshawar attack follows the same pattern seen across Pakistan’s border provinces — the terror networks once cultivated by the state are now consuming it. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, long tied to the TTP, has revived its campaign against Pakistani security forces, targeting installations and judicial complexes.
Just a week earlier, the same group carried out a suicide bombing in Islamabad’s judicial complex, and before that, the Delhi Red Fort blast was traced back to Pakistan-backed operatives.
These incidents show the web of Pakistan’s “strategic assets” turning against their creator. For decades, Rawalpindi’s military establishment treated groups like TTP and JuA as geopolitical instruments. Now, the same networks have become Pakistan’s worst internal threat, a terror state devoured by its own creation.
A state in denial
Despite its collapsing internal order, Pakistan continues to project itself as a victim of terrorism, conveniently ignoring that it is the global epicenter of jihadist terrorism. Each new attack, whether in Peshawar, Quetta, or Karachi, exposes the hollow claims of “counterterror success” that Islamabad’s officials parade before the world.
The pattern is clear: the Pakistani deep state sponsors terror abroad, suppresses dissent at home, and then feigns shock when the same violence erupts in its streets.
India and the wider region have long warned that a country that breeds terrorism for export cannot escape its consequences. The blast in Peshawar is just another chapter in Pakistan’s slow implosion, a terror state now engulfed by the very fires it once fanned.
