Special Correspondent
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Pakistan People’s Party, in his inaugural address at the International Conference on “Pakistan Fighting War for the World Against Terrorism”, said that when his grandfather, Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, stood before the world, he spoke with the moral authority of a young republic. Unwilling to be dictated to by the powerful or the cynical, he told the mighty that history stands with those who dare, not with those who drift.
Today, in his spirit, I rise to remind the world that Pakistan is not drifting through the storm of global terrorism, Chairman Bilawal said. We are steering, often alone, through waves that would have capsized even larger vessels. We did not invite this carnage. Yet when terror’s black banners crossed our frontiers, from the peaks of our mountains to the markets of Quetta, we did not flinch. We chose to resist.
Chairman PPP said that in the grim arithmetic of the last two and a half decades, Pakistan has buried 92,000 sons and daughters, soldiers and civilians alike. Our economy has forfeited more than $150 billion in lost growth, shattered infrastructure, and displaced livelihoods. And still, we fight because the alternative is surrender, and surrender is not a word in the Pakistani dictionary. Just last year, 2024, was our deadliest in a decade. At least 685 of our service members embraced martyrdom in 444 separate attacks. 1,612 Pakistanis – teachers, traders, traffic wardens-never returned home. These are not mere statistics. They are vacant chairs at breakfast tables. Yet each tragedy strengthens our resolve. Every fallen comrade plants a flag that digs deeper into the soil extremists covet but will never own.
Let us be clear, any so-called shura may issue threats in Pashto, but its digital propaganda is subtitled in every language of discontent, Chairman PPP said. A bomb in Peshawar today draws its ideological fuse from a chatroom in northern Africa, its wiring diagram from a tutorial filmed in Damascus. Terrorism is borderless. The fight we wage is not Pakistan’s private quarrel. It is civilizational self-defense on behalf of all humanity. When the Tehrik-e-Taliban or the Majid Brigade tweets its manifesto, the algorithm that amplifies it does not stop at the Durand Line. It ricochets through Paris, Perth, and beyond. If we stand down, who will stand up?
Chairman Bilawal said that across two decades, Pakistan’s armed forces, backed by an iron-willed citizenry, have broken the back of al-Qaeda networks, dismantled so-called caliphates like Daesh, and driven the TTP from fortresses to foxholes. Operation Zarb-e-Azb drained the northern swamp. Radd-ul-Fasaad uprooted sleeper cells in our cities. Today’s operations in Balochistan and elsewhere have severed the nexus between separatism and foreign-funded terror. These campaigns are not cinematic missions staged from offshore carriers. They were boots in the dust, medics in the mud, schoolteachers reopening classrooms behind the front lines. While the world enjoys conferences that debate violent extremism, Pakistan confronts it daily on the front lines. Our roads are scarred with IED craters and suicide bomb strikes, the tariff we pay so the rest of humanity may commute in peace.
Is it too much to ask that visa desks respect the Pakistani passport that guards their peace? That multilateral lenders price our courage into their risk models? That media houses spell “Pakistan” without the lazy prefix “troubled”? Respect is the minimum dividend of sacrifice, Chairman Bilawal said.
Across the Durand Line, the Taliban regime was greeted by many as an inevitable fact. They promised stability. They delivered instead a 40% surge in militant attacks on Pakistani soil and a sanctuary for the TTP, the BLA and more. We say to Kabul: sovereignty confers duty. Stop the exits of fighters. Choke the arms traffic. Honour the blood-priced Doha commitments, or be judged by the company you keep.
We need equitable burden sharing. Counterterror financing, what used to be called the Coalition Support Fund, cannot be a tip left on the counter of war. We ask for structured investment in counterterrorism and counter-violent extremism. We need modern technology, advanced equipment, and the hardware of resilience. We must view development as a shield. Every school built in Waziristan is a bullet we never have to fire. Let the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) be joined by peace-a people’s economic and cultural corridor that funds micro-enterprise, women’s colleges, and solar grids in areas facing the brunt of this new wave of terror, from ex-FATA to the shores of Balochistan. No counterinsurgency has ever succeeded without first winning hearts and minds.
Chairman PPP recalled when Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was campaigning to confront this menace. In her final speech, she warned that militants wanted to remove Pakistan’s flag from Swat. While others cowered in fear, she declared that she would raise the flag herself. And she did. But she did so within a broader global understanding: that the next phase of combating extremism would require more than force, it would require hope.
Just as post-war Europe was rebuilt through the Marshall Plan, so too did the world promise a similar commitment to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not just bombs and boots, but roads, books, clinics, and campuses. That promise was not fulfilled. However, we must find our own way forward. That was the thinking behind President Zardari’s initiation of the CPEC, not geopolitical theatrics, but economic lifelines to communities ravaged by terror. Development is deterrence. Opportunity is security.
Chairman PPP stressed that we must now turn our gaze to the digital realm. He said that he has long advocated for a Digital Bill of Rights-one that grants our youth the ability to flourish online, safeguards their freedoms, and acts as a digital iron dome against extremist content. Algorithms that detect copyright violations in milliseconds can and must be trained to throttle hate. Silicon Valley must police its platforms, or we must legislate consequences into their negligence.
On financial support, banks that knowingly clear terror-linked remittances should face the same stigma as those that launder drug money. FATF must evolve from punitive greylisting to proactive intelligence sharing.
Success cannot come through hard power alone. We must display smart power – a blend of force and finesse. Extremism is not just an illness of the Kalashnikov. It is an illness of the textbook, the pulpit, the WhatsApp forward. We must craft a curriculum where Saadi walks beside Bulleh Shah, where the Prophet’s Charter of Madinah is studied as the first social contract, where Jinnah’s August 11 speech is memorized before breakfast. We must reclaim the microphone from those who preach division – and hand it to the scientist who codes solutions, Chairman Bilawal resolved.
Sixty-five percent of Pakistan is under the age of thirty. Terror groups salivate at that statistic. I look at the same number and see a firewall, Chairman PPP said. Give this generation broadband, venture capital, startup opportunities-and no recruiter in the tribal belt will match the romance of discovery we offer. Our women are our untapped brigade. No nation can fight half-handed while half its population is sidelined. The daughter who pilots an F-16. The widow who runs a microloan cooperative in Swabi. The coder in Karachi who encrypts military communications. They are the insurgents against ignorance-and ignorance is terror’s godfather.
Some capitals wag their fingers at Pakistan and ask, “Is Pakistan doing enough?” I respond in the idiom of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: we have bled enough to write the preface of peace in our own ink. We will not have that manuscript proofread by those who stayed safe behind oceans and alibis, Chairman PPP said.
He said that to the merchants of hate within – to those who romanticize terror from drawing rooms and YouTube channels – I say this: we will repatriate your hashtags to the courts, your bank accounts to the audit ledger, and, if needed, your fantasies to the iron bars of law. There is no constitutional right to weaponize religion. If the world demands that Pakistan outlaw militias, as we are doing and have done, then it must also demand that every people live free of collective punishment. Selective outrage is the oxygen of extremist recruiters.
From the Kashmir Valley to the olive orchards of Palestine, the world must deliver just peace, Chairman PPP said.
To India, Chairman Bilawal said that we have a shared stake in ending this cycle of fire. Since Pakistan and India last sat across the table to discuss terrorism in 2012, the world has changed – and so have we. We have fought and won the most extensive counterterrorism campaign in modern history. We dismantled militant networks, transformed our financial systems, and met the world’s toughest regulatory standards. After our successful exit from the FATF greylist, Pakistan stands among the most serious counterterrorism states in the world. It is time India recognizes this transformation – not as a concession, but as an opportunity. Terrorism is a collective malice. No bold offense, no nationalist rhetoric, no regional hegemony can shield one nation from a fire it helped light on the other side. Fire does not distinguish between the arsonist and the architect. We all learned this the hard way after 9/11. It is time India does as well. Terrorism has no nationality, no religion, no caste, no creed. It respects no border and abides by no law. From this floor, Chairman Bilawal said he offers a clear proposition: Pakistan is ready to forge a historic, phenomenal partnership with India – to jointly combat terror, not as adversaries playing a zero-sum game, but as neighbors with a shared moral and civilizational duty to protect over a billion souls from the plague of extremism.
All it requires is for India’s leadership to step down from the high horse that is galloping its republic toward the abyss, Chairman Bilawal said. Pursue peace with Pakistan. Sit with us. Talk to us. Let us resolve Kashmir in accordance with the aspirations of its people. Let us end the weaponization of water. Let us build a peace as mighty as the Himalayas. Let us return to our shared traditions – not grounded in hate, but rooted in the ancient soil of the Indus Valley Civilization. It is not weakness to extend a hand, it is wisdom, Chairman Bilawal said.
To the world, Chairman PPP extended an invitation: come train with us. Learn from Pakistan. Learn from our armed forces, our special forces, our police. Study our counterterrorism authority’s data sets-few are richer. Walk through a rebuilt Pakistan in the aftermath of terror – few places show a more vivid before-and-after. Let partnership replace perception.
Chairman Bilawal said that he speaks not only as a former Foreign Minister or Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, but as a son of the soil – who has met mothers clutching photographs of children lost to blasts, who has stood beside journalists dodging bullets to tell the truth, who belongs to a generation shaped by the sound of explosions. I pledge that Pakistan will pursue every cell, choke every pipeline, and confront every narrative that seeks to turn our cradle of civilization into a cemetery of hope, Chairman PPP said.
From this house, I ask for unanimous resolve, Chairman Bilawal said. In the words of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, we have come too far and sacrificed too much to turn back now. And from our allies, I ask for the courage of consistency. Stand by us when we win headlines, and stand with us when we bury our dead. Chairman Bilawal said that when his grandfather thundered at the United Nations in 1965, he warned: “We will fight for a thousand years, but we will not surrender.” Today, he echoes him – with one revision.
We will fight for as long as it takes – but we will not need a thousand years.
Because our enemy is small against the expanse of our conviction.
And conviction is the oldest, strongest weapon known to humankind.
Let the clerics of chaos know: the people of Pakistan have endured empire and earthquakes, partition and dictatorship, floods and pandemics. Your improvised explosives are a footnote in a story whose chapters are written in resilience.
Let the merchants of fear know: every time you strike, we rebuild taller. Every time you divide, we reconcile deeper. Every time you preach death, we invest in life.
And let the world know: when the dust of this era settles, the chronicles will record that Pakistan – misunderstood, maligned, yet magnificent – stood at the trench line, stared into the abyss, and by the grace of God and the grit of our people, dragged humanity back from the brink.
