Attacks from the Pakistan Taliban and Baloch separatists are escalating as relationships with Afghanistan and India are worsening.
Pakistan is having a very bad year. The government is struggling to stop terrorist and militant attacks from multiple directions. This year is on track to be the worst year for terror-related fatalities in Pakistan in a decade, continuing a multiyear pattern of escalating violence from militant and terrorist groups.
Pakistan’s primary threat from the 2010s, the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Pakistan Taliban) has been reinvigorated by the takeover of Afghanistan by the distinct but ideologically similar Afghan Taliban. A U.N. report last year found that Afghan Taliban support to the Pakistan Taliban “appears to have increased” in substantial part. U.N. experts concluded this was because “the [Afghan] Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP significant” – the “debt owed” reference reflects prior TTP assistance to the Afghan group.
Pakistan had hoped that providing safe haven for the Afghan Taliban during the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 would give the Pakistan government considerable influence once the Afghan group re-took Kabul after the U.S. withdrawal in August of 2021. Instead, Pakistan army chief Asim Munir has admitted in the press that their Afghan neighbors “don’t listen to us.”
Insurgents escalate to hijacking
Adding to Pakistan’s woes, an insurgency in the large southwestern province of Balochistan has substantially worsened. Earlier this month, Baloch separatists briefly hijacked a passenger train traveling between Quetta, Balochistan’s provincial capital, and Peshawar, the capital of the neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Armed separatists took nearly 400 passengers hostage. The Pakistan army hurriedly launched a raid to kill the hijackers and free the hostages, which ended the standoff, but left many dead. Both sides dispute the number of casualties. The figure is at least several dozen passengers dead, in addition to the separatists, according to official accounts, though Baloch separatists say the death toll was far higher.
This incident has worsened Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan and India, as Pakistan has blamed both countries for the increase in terrorism. Pakistani officials accuse the Afghan Taliban of providing safe haven for militants and terrorists targeting Pakistan. The result has been clashes on the border, the closure of major border crossings, and general ill-will between the two neighbors. And Pakistan accuses India, its longtime rival, of fomenting insurgencies internally. India, for its part, says Pakistan is just trying to deflect blame from its own poor governance and Islamabad’s prior track record of supporting insurgencies in India.
Pakistan can perhaps hold onto one cause for qualified optimism. Pakistani intelligence agencies were quick to field an early request from the Trump administration for help capturing an individual that the U.S. alleges was responsible for several Islamic State-Khorasan Province attacks, including a deadly attack on U.S. forces in Kabul during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops. This assistance earned Pakistan a public thank you from President Trump in his March 4 address to a joint session of Congress. In his first administration, Trump halted most of the U.S. military aid going to Pakistan.
Islamabad hardly needs American antipathy to add to its list of problems – and counterterrorism cooperation may put Pakistan on a better footing with the new Trump administration.
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