When the world enters an age of shadow wars, the first defence of a state is the strength of its system
I sometimes wonder whether, as a writer, I have become a kind of parallel state in my own mind-not a state that commands armies or signs agreements, but one that watches, observes and tries to understand the wars that governments cannot always explain to their citizens. The world is entering an era in which war is no longer confined to the battlefield. Some wars are visible; others operate through missiles, drones, information, economic pressure, political influence and carefully cultivated uncertainty. Between peace and open war lies a large and increasingly important space in which states compete without always declaring that they are at war.
The recent escalation around Saudi Arabia is another reminder of how quickly that space can become dangerous. Houthi forces have intensified attacks against Saudi territory and infrastructure, while the wider conflict around Yemen has again moved towards strategic confrontation. The question of what Pakistan’s newly established defence relationship with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye may mean in such circumstances has naturally entered public discussion. Yet Pakistan’s position is more complex than a simple question of entering or avoiding a war. Its commitments, interests, geography, economic requirements, regional relationships and internal stability all form part of the same strategic calculation. Pakistan has itself indicated that no immediate military response has been discussed under the Mecca agreement.
This is precisely why the idea of national strength needs to be examined beyond military power.
A state living in an age of shadow wars cannot afford to think about security only at the level of borders. Its real resilience begins much closer to home. It begins with whether institutions function, whether information moves accurately, whether the police know what is happening in their jurisdiction, whether local administration can respond before a small problem becomes a political crisis, and whether the citizen believes that the state exists not only in Islamabad or a provincial capital but at the end of his own street.
This brings the argument back to Pakistan’s internal structure.
There is considerable discussion about provinces, new provinces, smaller administrative units and decentralisation. These are legitimate questions, and there may be circumstances in which administrative boundaries require reconsideration. But before asking how many units Pakistan should have, another question deserves priority:
How well does each existing unit actually function?
The state is ultimately experienced from the ground upward.
The individual encounters the household. The household encounters the street. The street belongs to a neighbourhood. The neighbourhood connects to a town. The town connects to a tehsil. The tehsil connects to a district. The district connects to the province, and the province to the federation.
If that chain functions properly, the citizen does not need to understand every administrative boundary. He simply experiences a state that works.
If it does not function, creating another administrative unit may only reproduce the same weakness on a smaller map.
This is where Pakistan’s next stage of institutional thinking could become much more important than another debate about political geography. The central question should be whether every level of the system has a clearly defined responsibility, a functioning institution, reliable information and an accountable authority.
Take the local police station.
For an ordinary citizen, the police station may be one of the most direct points of contact with the state. It should know its area, understand its local patterns of crime, maintain reliable records, respond to complaints and remain connected to the wider administrative and security structure. The citizen should not have to discover, through personal experience, which institution is responsible for his safety.
The same principle applies to the street.
A functioning state should be able to know what is happening in its streets without treating every citizen as a suspect. Effective surveillance in a modern state is not simply watching people. It is possessing enough reliable information to understand patterns, identify risks, recognise emerging criminal or extremist networks and distinguish an ordinary social disagreement from something that may develop into a serious security problem.
The objective should be that people feel protected by the system, not watched by the system.
That difference is fundamental.
When the local system works, citizens have less need to depend upon informal power structures. They do not need political intermediaries for every ordinary matter. They do not need to turn every administrative problem into an ethnic, provincial or partisan question. A functioning institution absorbs ordinary grievances before they become larger political identities.
This has a direct connection with national cohesion.
People naturally have multiple identities. A Pakistani may identify strongly with a province, language, district, tribe, city or cultural tradition. None of these identities needs to disappear. The state becomes stronger when these identities can exist comfortably beneath a larger and dependable citizenship.
But when institutions fail consistently, people begin to search for protection and recognition elsewhere. Identity can then become more than culture. It can become an alternative structure of political dependence.
This is where internal weakness can become strategically valuable to actors operating in a shadow war.
A foreign actor does not necessarily have to invent a grievance. A grievance may already exist. It only needs to discover where the system is weakest, identify the people who feel excluded, amplify the narrative, connect networks and turn dissatisfaction into political leverage.
That is why national security and good administration are not separate subjects.
A weak local institution can eventually become a national-security problem. A poorly functioning police station can become a criminal network’s opportunity. An unresolved local grievance can become a political mobilisation. A communication failure can become a rumour. A rumour can become distrust. Distrust can become a narrative about the state itself.
The distance between an administrative failure and a strategic vulnerability can therefore be surprisingly short.
This is also why the discussion about provinces should be approached with greater precision.
A new province may be justified if it demonstrably improves administration, representation, resource management and access to government. But the boundary itself is not the solution. A province is only as strong as the institutions operating inside it.
The same applies to smaller units.
If the police station does not function, a smaller district does not automatically solve the problem. If the local administration cannot deliver, a new tehsil does not automatically create capacity. If public institutions remain dependent upon personal influence, changing their geographical jurisdiction does not change the underlying relationship between citizen and state.
Function must come before fragmentation.
The first task is therefore to make the system work from the individual outward: individual to household, household to street, street to neighbourhood, neighbourhood to town, town to tehsil, tehsil to district, district to province and province to federation.
Each level should know its responsibility. Each should possess the capacity to act. Each should be connected to the level above it. And each should ultimately answer to the citizen.
When this happens, something much more important than administrative efficiency takes place.
The citizen begins to forget the distance between himself and the state.
He may live in a village, a street, a town, a district or a province. He may speak one language at home and another in public life. He may carry a regional history that is centuries old. But his experience of law, security, education, public administration and basic services tells him something larger:
I live in Pakistan.
That is the kind of cohesion a state should seek.
Not uniformity.
Not the disappearance of provincial identities.
Not the suppression of legitimate political demands.
But a system so capable and dependable that no citizen has to choose between his local identity and his national citizenship.
In an age of shadow wars, this may be one of Pakistan’s most important strategic assets.
The world outside may continue to produce conflicts that demand difficult decisions. Pakistan will continue to have friendships, agreements, obligations and national interests that require careful statecraft. It cannot approach every conflict as though military participation were the only measure of loyalty, nor can it treat every external crisis as unrelated to its own security.
A serious state calculates.
It preserves its commitments, protects its interests and understands the limits of its resources. But it also understands that the credibility of a country’s external posture ultimately rests upon the strength of its internal system.
A country that knows what is happening in its streets, whose institutions respond to its citizens, whose police understand their jurisdictions, whose local administration functions and whose people trust the basic machinery of the state possesses something more durable than a temporary political advantage.
It possesses resilience.
And perhaps this is where the discussion about Pakistan’s future should begin-not with the question of how many provinces we should create, but with a much more basic question:
Can we make the state work so well, from the individual to the street and from the street to the federation, that wherever a Pakistani lives, he experiences one Pakistan?
That would be more than administrative reform.
It would be national security built from the ground up.
And in an age when wars increasingly begin in the spaces between peace and conflict, that may be the most important defence of all.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or position of this website. The website does not endorse or oppose any opinion presented herein.