Abstract
Pakistan has regained the status of the frontline state immediately after the holocaust of 9/11 and adopted the both military and non-military based counter terrorism strategy. The paper critically examines evolution, prospects and implications of Pakistan’s counter terrorism efforts and analyzes inefficacy of Pakistan’s counter terrorism policies during the period 2001-2013. Pakistan has been worst terrorist hit state in the post 9/11 environment which sacrifices over 8500 military and almost 40000 civilian lives. Along with that Pakistan has to face a bounce back reaction of its military operations against the home grown and international terrorists i.e. religious extremism, insurgency, cross border infiltration, affluent terrorist attacks on military and public centers and a terrible series of suicidal attacks. Pakistan faces the after effects of its ineffective counter terrorism strategy in the context of domestic, regional and international security reservations. Although Pakistan has initiated several military operations to root out the sanctuaries of Taliban and al-Qaeda but yet could not satisfy the United States and international community due to lacking of intangible scheme plan, incident to incident counter approach, much focus on negotiation and cease fire, discrimination between bad and good Taliban, sympathetic policy towards home grown terrorist organizations, vulnerable internal security and inconclusive military operations. Pakistan direly needs substantial overhauling policy, a strong national consensus on WOT, balance in civil-military relations in the context of decision making and identification of enemy while fighting against extremism, militancy and terrorism.