Islamist militants have Pakistan's police in their crosshairs

Police officers hold their weapons during a training session at the Elite Police Training Centre in Nowshera, Pakistan, February 10, 2023. Newly graduated police officers are trained at the vast Elite Police Training Center for six months, where they are taught how to conduct raids, to rappel from buildings with a rope and use rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns, which they practice on a simulated militant training camp. REUTERS/Fayaz Aziz

BARA, Pakistan (Reuters) -Atop a police outpost in northwest Pakistan, Faizanullah Khan stands behind a stack of sandbags and peers through the sight of an anti-aircraft gun, scanning the terrain along the unofficial boundary with the country's restive former tribal areas.

On this cold and rainy February morning, he was looking not for aircraft but for Islamist fighters behind attacks against his force, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial police.