Editorial: Pakistan's Struggle Against Rising Extreminism
18 people, including five soldiers, were killed and 32 others were injured in a terrorist attack on the outskirts of Bannu cantonment
Editorial: Terrorism in Pakistan is showing no signs of abating. On Thursday, the army foiled a terrorist attack on a check barrier in Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Five civilians were injured in the operation, but the terrorists failed to achieve their goal of killing the soldiers posted at the check barrier.
Earlier, on Tuesday, 18 people, including five soldiers, were killed and 32 others were injured in a terrorist attack on the outskirts of Bannu cantonment in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province itself. Six children were also among the dead. The next day, on Wednesday, the army claimed that all 16 terrorist elements associated with the Bannu attack have been eliminated.
On the other hand, the terrorist group ‘Jeesh-e-Fursan’, which claimed responsibility for the Bannu attack, had called the army’s claim ridiculous and counter-claimed that only four ‘mujahids’ died in the Bannu operation. Pakistani media is accustomed to publishing official press releases about terrorist attacks or other violent acts exactly.
Despite this tendency or compulsion, it has now started showing an inclination to question the army’s claims. The English newspaper ‘Frontier Post’ published from Peshawar expressed this inclination in an editorial on Thursday. It has declared the claim of ‘Jesh-e-Fursan’ as correct and has advised the army’s information agency ‘ISPR’ and the Pakistani government to tell the truth.
The ‘Institute for Economics and Peace’, which ranks terrorist incidents globally, has recorded in its report called ‘Global Terror Index 2025’ that a major terrorist act took place in Pakistan every third day during the year 2024.
There were 45 percent more deaths due to terrorist violence in Pakistan in 2024 compared to 2023. The number of deaths in 2023 was 717; in 2024 it was 1099. In the same report, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been described as the second most dangerous terrorist group in the world. According to the report, TTP took 558 lives through 482 terrorist operations during 2024. Pakistani media has been calling ‘Jesh-e-Fursan’ a branch of TTP.
Even now, it has accused ‘Jesh-e-Fursan’ of having bases in Afghanistan and of supporting the Afghan Taliban. Along with this, allegations of India’s hand at the head of TTP have also been repeated. The Indian Foreign Office has termed these allegations as ‘ridiculous’ and described Pakistan as a victim of the ‘as you sow, so you reap’ mentality. Despite such allegations, the fact cannot be ignored that terrorism remains a major challenge for Pakistan and it has so far failed to meet this challenge.
Last year, the government of Prime Minister Azam Shahbaz Sharif had ordered the army to launch an all-out campaign to make no concessions to terrorist groups and deal with each group with a strong hand. It was named ‘Azam-e-Istihkam’. The army also claimed to have eliminated about 700 terrorists from May to December 2024, but terrorist acts have not decreased.
According to Pakistani data, 91 people died in 74 attacks during January 2025. It is clear that despite operations like ‘Azam’, neither did the killing power of terrorists in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province decrease, nor did the attacks on government institutions and police stations-posts by the ‘Baloch National Army’ (BNA) and other Baloch militant groups in Balochistan decrease.
Pakistan, because it has been using terrorist groups to create instability in neighboring countries, especially India, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, is not getting support or sympathy from other countries for its current ‘war on terror’. This situation has become a threat to its geographical security as well as its economic security. This is no small tragedy in itself.
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