Hassankhel and Hangu have delivered the same message in two forms. In one case, a policeman was kidnapped and martyred, the second such incident in the area within 72 hours. In the other, gunmen attacked police assigned to guard a polio team just as Pakistan launched its second nationwide anti-polio drive of the year.
A country reveals itself in the way it treats the men asked to stand first in danger. The policeman on a rough road in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is not an abstraction. He is the face of the republic where the republic is tested hardest. Similarly, the escort beside a vaccinator is not a stage property in a public-health campaign. He is the guarantee that the state will reach a child before fear does. When such men are hunted, Pakistan is being challenged in plain sight, and the answer cannot be hesitation.
That answer must begin with respect for sacrifice, followed by resolve. The state is right to frame these killings as an assault on national authority, because that is what they are. Militants choose policemen, escorts, checkpoints and district routes for a reason. They want citizens to think the state is present only in speeches and absent when night falls early. They want a distance between Islamabad and the periphery to feel permanent. Pakistan cannot allow that idea to settle. It has buried too many officers, soldiers, teachers, worshippers and children to indulge fresh confusion about the character of this war.
There is evidence of endurance, and it matters. Pakistan has kept the anti-polio effort alive through years of bloodshed and lies. Officials say more than 200 polio workers and police assigned to protect them have been killed since the 1990s.
Yet the campaign continues, with the latest drive aiming to reach more than 45 million children across the country. Last year, 31 polio cases were reported nationwide. This year, one case has been recorded so far. That is what state persistence looks like–imperfect, costly, stubborn, real.
Pakistan now needs a harder public consensus: sympathy for the fallen must translate into firmer backing for the institutions still standing watch. That means faster prosecution, cleaner intelligence coordination, and political nerve that does not sag after each funeral. *