Muhammad Amir Rana, a security analyst based in Islamabad, said the Peshawar school attack, coming as it did amid a general lessening of extremist tendencies in Pakistan, galvanized public support for the army. The military’s successful effort to clear Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt of militant groups that posed a threat to the state has won it additional respect…

When it comes to the Islamic State, he said, “there is a general sense of revulsion.”

“People now realize what terrorism has brought to Pakistan,” Hussain said. Nearly 60,000 Pakistanis have been killed since 2001 in terrorist attacks or battles between militants and security forces. “Now, there is a conscious effort, both by the state and the people, and particularly in the past year or so, to put up a rather civilized face,” he said.

But analysts have been arguing for months that this Sunni-
dominated Muslim country could become fertile ground for the ­Islamic State.