In the 70-plus days since Pakistan's new prime minister took office, the country has suffered roughly 70 terrorist attacks. So why doesn't Nawaz Sharif have a counterterrorism policy?

By Arif Rafiq, op-ed @ ForeignPolicy.com, August 22, 2012

Sixty-six years ago last week, Pakistan came into existence on the Night of Destiny, the holiest night in the Islamic calendar [....] For many Pakistanis, this was not mere coincidence, but evidence that the Muslim homeland was born of Providence [....]

Alas, Pakistan today is, in the words of Roedad Khan, a bureaucrat who served five Pakistani presidents, "a dream gone sour." Pakistan suffered more terrorist attacks than any other country in the world in 2012, has the second-largest number of children without access to schools, and boasts one of the world's lowest tax-to-GDP ratios. The rancidity of the dream appears to grow with each passing day. 

As for Islam, the glue that once bound Pakistanis together is now increasingly a dividing force that defines the blood-stained boundaries between them. The Islamic Republic is in the midst of what will likely be a long war within, as some jihadists who once served as instruments of the military fight their erstwhile patrons. They seek to impose a radical Islamic state upon Pakistan's 190 million people and subdue its religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, and Shiite Muslims, whom they believe to be kuffar, or infidels, and worthy of death.

This domestic threat looms large in the minds of Pakistan's military leadership [....]