who funds them or who trains them is secondary question.
Not as much as you think, bhai.
Put it this way: Jehad is an ideology. It has not face, no identity, no demographic, no clear cut system of identification other than the name of the religion that it takes.
Which means, those in command among such groups have to simply utter a few religious verses, show a couple of photoshopped images around the world and in the name of religion, they have an unlimited supply of EXPENDIBLE manpower, especially the unemployed youth and teens both educated and illiterate. Some are even from very high professional backgrounds making them even more dangerous and cunning.
So saying that this is a secondary question would be wrong; because until we target the root cause, we will not be able to stem the unlimited supply of brainwashed manpower.
It is important to find, strategize and strike against the root even if it means war with a third country, who may be found guilty of backing these scum.
does Pakistan as nation have clear policy to counter them? does the nation offer a narrative that can clearly differentiate these anarchist groups from the majority of the masses?
Do WE have a clear cut policy?
POTA was removed which curbed terrorism in a brute but effective fashion. The same political excuse was given over and for cheap politics, an effective mechanism to tackle terrorism was stopped under MCOCA which is in no way even half of what POTA was.
We don't have a Patriot Act in our law books where ruthless action like US and Russian presidents can be taken.
In fact, the only reason why we are better placed to deal with jehad is that thanks to the terror attempts during 90s, our Armed forces learned a totally new form of warfare and pioneered in it. It cost a lot of lives but today, our men in uniform are battle hardened and can take on jehadi terror head on.
But there is absolutely no clear cut policy of tackling terror at government level thanks to a very very dirty form of politics.