No ground to concede

Seventeen dead, more than twenty wounded, an entire district placed under emergency - this is the arithmetic of Sunday's suicide bombing outside a police station in Kabal tehsil of Swat. Six policemen were among the martyred. Malakand's deputy inspector general has attributed the attack to Fitna al Khawarij, the outlawed TTP in other words. Preliminary investigation suggests the bomber may have been an Afghan national. If confirmed, this will be one more entry in a pattern that Pakistan's security establishment has spent the better part of two years documenting and that Kabul has spent the same two years denying.

The pattern is no longer disputable in its broad shape, whatever remains contested in its details. Yet, the Afghan Taliban continue to insist the TTP is Pakistan's internal matter, a formulation that asks Islamabad to accept as domestic a threat that is manufactured, trained and sheltered across an international border. That formulation should be rejected as often and as plainly as it is offered. It is worth stating without euphemism what a no tolerance policy actually requires. It requires that the writ of the state be treated as non-negotiable. It requires that facilitators, financiers and sympathisers inside Pakistan face the same institutional resolve as the men who plant the explosives. The Afghan Taliban's continued refusal to act against TTP sanctuaries is not cost-free for Kabul either. A government seeking international legitimacy cannot simultaneously claim sovereignty and disclaim responsibility for what operates from within its borders. That contradiction is the leverage Pakistan's diplomacy should be built around.

The regional picture carries a further complication. India's reopening of its embassy in Kabul and its deepening outreach to the Taliban administration have unfolded in parallel with this conflict. Vigilance here is not paranoia. It is prudence, and it belongs in every diplomatic conversation Pakistan conducts with Kabul.