Once again, the frontier has flared up and once again, the alarm bells are being muffled by political distractions. In the early hours of Sunday, Pakistani security forces eliminated 54 militants trying to slip across from Afghanistan into North Waziristan. Fifty-four men. Armed, trained, and ready to wreak havoc. It was one of the deadliest infiltration attempts in recent years. But let’s not kid ourselves: this wasn’t a one-off. Last year alone, Pakistan launched more than 59,000 counterterrorism operations, taking out over 900 terrorists. And still, the threat is not receding: it is adapting, regrouping, entrenching itself deeper across the border, where groups like the TTP thrive under the Taliban’s watch. The uncomfortable truth is that Afghanistan’s soil continues to serve as a staging ground for terror against Pakistan. Islamabad’s pleas for border management and security cooperation have mostly fallen on deaf ears. We are staring down the barrel of a slow-motion security collapse if we keep treating these attacks as isolated incidents instead of symptoms of a larger, unresolved war festering on our doorstep. And just as this fire spreads, India fans the flames. After the attack on tourists in Kashmir, India, without any investigation, pinned on Pakistan. A dangerous provocation at a time when the region desperately needs calm heads. Instead of recognizing that terrorism is a regional cancer, India’s posture risks locking South Asia into a new, uglier cycle of hostility. But let’s bring the focus home: Pakistan cannot afford to play a defensive game anymore. It’s not enough to eliminate infiltrators one operation at a time. It’s not enough to build fences and patrol borders. We need a national strategy that finally breaks the back of extremist networks and the conditions that feed them. That means more than guns and raids. It means investing in border regions that have been left to rot. It means finally uprooting extremist narratives from our educational, religious, and political institutions. It means giving intelligence agencies the tools they need and the civilian oversight they deserve. It means forging a real, regional coalition against terror, even if the neighbours aren’t eager partners. This is not just about North Waziristan. It’s about the future of Pakistan itself. We have spent two decades fighting symptoms. Now is the time to cure the disease. We either act with unity and vision or we brace for another bloody decade of endless, grinding war. *