If we follow TTP and other militants from 2001 who are anti Pakistani, their messages have always been that Pakistani army and people are mushrikeen and kufar, this is why their jihad is legitimate. I've seen many videos in Pushtun with the wording "kufar, mushrikeen faoj Pakistan". People need to understand their is no such thing as jihad Akbar against fellow Muslims, unless you declare them as non Muslims. So militants sell it to their foot soldiers that we are fighting against shirk. Its a pretty strong slogan.
Our establishement on the other hand completely failed to deal with this, after 20 years they still have not managed to find a counter narrative to deal with this, we had the anti ttp lashkars, we have anti ttp militia who fought against ttp but guess what, it was declared as terrorist organisation by the Pakistani government, the anti ttp lashkars were abandoned, Why? Who made that decision? They only fought against ttp to defend themselves? Who is the establishment scared of? I can gurantee their are many facilitators in the higher ups who support these militants, who make excuses for them, only General Raheel Sharif gave a danda to them and nobody offered him extention even after the amount of work he did for Pakistan.