Terrorism is said to be the use of physical violence against innocent civilians or neutral military personnels to achieve their particular aims mostly political or ideological. Terrorism has become a huge and dangerous threat globally, whereas in Pakistan, it has become very common. Pakistan is facing terrorism from more than 20 years now, the terrorist activities is believed to have started in 2000 its experience could be trace back to Soviet-Afghan war in 1979 in which Pakistan served as an ally to US and Saudi Arabia, in this period many of the militant groups emerged, later on these militant groups were adopted by intelligence agency of Pakistan to gain their strategic objectives in the region. The porous borders of Pakistan as well as the sectarian divisions, the political instability, poor economy or we can also say economic constrains, the rivalry of the intelligence agencies are major challenges for Pakistan regarding the terrorism concerns. Currently, Pakistan has emerged with many terrorist organizations which includes Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Various areas of Pakistan are often utilized by these groups to cause chaos, violence, fear and instability such as porous borders of Pakistan, sectarian divisions and spaces which are ungoverned mostly parts of Baluchistan, Waziristan, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK), in which KPK was accounted for 64% deaths in 2022. In 2014, an operation was launched by the Army of Pakistan known as Zarb-e-Azab, this operation was against the terrorists’ strongholds in northern Waziristan. This operation was a huge success but with that Pakistan faced many challenges such as the displacement of the civilians, over 1 million civilians were displaced and huge number of resources such as food, humanitarian aid and other basic needs were required. In addition to that, intelligence agencies faced many challenges and difficulties in identifying the terrorist leaders which allowed them (terrorist) to escape and form new groups. From 2015-2019 these terrorist activities were so much decreased, almost came to an end but it started to increase again from 2020-2022, which causes 971 fatalities in 2022. Although has made many efforts in countering the terrorist activities and is still making efforts but couldn’t brought it to an end yet because of the poor condition of government and major security concerned agencies, also the counter terrorism efforts of Pakistan always get limited international cooperation which hinders the effectiveness of the operations. In my opinion if Pakistan wants to end terrorism permanently and effectively it should address its internal masses and make efforts to strengthen its intelligence coordination agencies, in addition to that Pakistan should must formulize an effective strategy to counter the terrorism attacks, also economic development will also play an important role in countering or eliminating these attacks from the region, political stability could also be an effective effort for the terrorist activities and as well as Pakistan should concern international cooperations. Pakistan can only and only overcome these threats by collective and sustained efforts.
The writer is a student of Strategic Studies at National Defense University and a member of PYDIR.