Pakistan Under Siege

Pakistan’s Bloody Decade

The West considers Pakistan a cradle of radical Islam and a nearly lawless place where terrorists thrive unchecked. The 9/11 Commission Report argued that the nation’s “endemic poverty, widespread corruption and often-ineffective government” directly enabled the growth of extremism – and these claims have an undeniable truth. According to one estimate, the Taliban and other terrorist organizations are responsible for the deaths of more than 25,000 Pakistanis over the past decade. In 2012, a terror group attacked Malala Yousafzai, then 15, for agitating for the right of girls to attend school. What’s more, Osama bin Laden was able to hide out in Pakistan for years. Bin Laden was killed in a home near Pakistan’s military academy, leading to the obvious conclusion that Pakistani officials knew bin Laden’s whereabouts but declined to reveal his location to the United States.

Yet any simplified characterization of Pakistan inevitably overlooks the nation’s complexity. It’s a country of 200 million people, and its citizens’ views of extremism are more nuanced than many imagine. While ordinary...