On 13 August 2025, Ava Grainger-Williams published an article titled “Yes, ISIS is Still a Problem” in which she tried to present Pakistan as the location of a terrorist organization, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Not only is this kind of framing misleading, but it also ignores the realities on the ground and how markedly Pakistan has improved its counterterrorism efforts in the past decade.

The continued misperceptions to this end discredit the efforts of the Pakistani law agencies, security, and civilian agencies, the proponents of the war on terrorism, who have had to shoulder most of the casualties in the process of destroying the militant infrastructure within the nation.

ISKP does not possess any ordered infrastructure in Pakistan; its operational roots lie in Afghanistan.

On the contrary, to exaggerated claims, ISKP does not possess any ordered infrastructure in Pakistan. Its leadership, planning nodes, and its recruitment pipelines have also deep roots in Afghanistan, whereby the collapse of governance and crevices of the security have enabled extremist groups to flourish. ISKP insurgents use the Afghan soil as a refuge, propagating violence externally and thereby trying to disrupt the stability of adjacent countries.

Recent studies, such as the one by the United Nations Sanctions and Monitoring Committee, directly support the idea that Afghanistan and not Pakistan is the nerve of the operational system of ISKP. Such independent evaluations agree with the fact that Pakistan currently experiences attacks on the western frontier of its country instead of cultivating them in the country. Criticism that purports otherwise is to falsify the issue and misrepresent the geography of terror.

In the previous several months, high-precision efforts of high precision have been applied by the intelligence establishment of Pakistan against the remnants of ISKP cells that were operating within the Pakistani territory. Relevant operatives have been arrested through synchronised attacks and sleepers disrupted, together with logistical and financial lines severed. These accomplishments are not stories; they are supported by documentation and are verified by security observation groups.

These successes underline the effectiveness of the intelligence-led model employed in Pakistan that makes use of granular surveillance and human intelligence along with inter-agency coordination to pre-empt the threats before they develop into coordinated campaigns of violence. The arrests further define the intention of Pakistan to face the ISKP with the same determination that it used in taking on al-Qaeda, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the sectarian groups.

The visible indication of the success of the state can be seen in the statistical decrease of the ISKP-related attacks in Pakistan. According to official statistics, in the last two years, the number of incidents caused by ISKP decreased dramatically. The operational area within Pakistan has been shrunk drastically, where the group used to make headline-grabbing attacks. This trend is not an accident.

Pakistan’s intelligence-led operations have shrunk ISKP’s footprint dramatically.

This is the reliable effect of regular actions, which are carried out consistently based on intelligence on the national and provincial levels. Whether in the urban counterterrorism operations in Karachi and Lahore or the watchfulness of the western border boundaries, Pakistan has hardly given ISKP space to work around. These results break down the story of Pakistan as a centre of ISKP presence and, from a perspective, reflect on how it has been successful in preventing the regional aspirations of the group.

It is imperative to note that the issue is not an internal complacency in the case of Pakistan but a plot fomented outside of it at the expense of Afghan territory. Safehouses in Afghanistan and the far-flung regions have been reused by ISKP fighters to fund, direct, and plan cross-border attacks. Such havens can offer the group room to breathe, as they reorganize themselves, and fund their activities via illegal channels, specifically by accessing young and vulnerable individuals, who have lost faith in the stability of the region.

By contrast, Pakistan has methodically denied ISKP a permanent grip, and it instead must depend on infiltration and external lairs as opposed to a localized stronghold. The significance of this geographic difference is that its absence erodes the boundary between the terror origin site and the combating terror state.

Pakistan does not have an achievement record on counterterrorism; it is not a narrative of selective targeting but an all-inclusive threshold strategy. This approach is symbolized by such operations as Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad, which do not differentiate between ideological hues when targeting their networks.

Patiently unravelling militant ecosystems once thought to be deep-rooted, Pakistan’s security forces, in conjunction with civilian intelligence organizations, have reversed them. Elimination of ISKP is the extension of this heritage and affirms that no terrorist group is permitted to use this land as its advantage. The level of sacrifice made by the state in the form of thousands of lives of citizens lost and billions of financial expenses serves as evidence.

Misrepresenting Pakistan as an ISKP hub risks obscuring the true epicenter of terror in Afghanistan.

The intentions to depict Pakistan as a hub of ISKP overlook other consequences of a false diagnosis of the issue. The honesty with regard to the sources of the power of ISKP is the key to stabilizing the region, as the roots of the movement and its hierarchical organization are in Afghanistan. European and Asian cooperation on combating terrorism should therefore focus on destroying the group at its epicentre, and strengthening Pakistan as a first-line state that has been unerring in denying terrorists safe sanctuary.

Any story that dis-centres Afghanistan subjects it to the risk of developing blind spots, which extremists can take advantage of. Furthermore, it also highlights the dubious implication of dismissing Pakistan’s efforts, which on numerous occasions have garnered international acclaim from allies, multilateral bodies, and even impartial observers.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.