Beyond the Double Game: Lessons from Pakistan’s Approach to Islamist Militancy.

States commonly take one of three approaches to militant groups on their soil: collaboration; benign neglect; or belligerence. All three approaches are present in Pakistan, where some groups also move back and forth among these categories. I employ the term “coopetition” to capture this fluidity. The dynamic nature of militancy in Pakistan makes the country an excellent laboratory for exploring a state’s assessment of the utility an Islamist militant group offers, and the threat it poses relative to other threats informs the state’s treatment of that group. In this article, I put forward a typology that situates Islamist militants in Pakistan in one of the above four categories. I also illustrate how a group’s identity, objectives, and alliances inform assessments of its utility and threat relative to other threats. In addition to enhancing our understanding of militant-state dynamics, this taxonomy builds on and helps to unify earlier typologies of Pakistani militancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]