Pakistan’s Volatile Security Landscape

As 2024 ended, Pakistan’s internal security landscape was marked by complexity, volatility, and lethality. The insurgent and jihadist groups not only challenged the writ of the state in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, but they also showed an offensive posture in their attacks, frequently targeting military camps, security convoys, and check posts.

Although the Pakistani government devised a new counterterrorism strategy – Azm-i-Istehkam (Resolve for Stability) – to expedite the ongoing intelligence-based operations, it failed to break the momentum of terrorist groups. The external sanctuaries of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch separatist groups in Afghanistan and Iran, respectively, also undermined the efficacy of Azm-i-Istehkam.

In 2024, the most concerning trend was the lethality of terrorist attacks. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal database, as many as 1,261 violent incidents left 2,113 people dead in 2024, compared to 1,513 deaths in 921 violent incidents in 2023. There has been a staggering 36 percent increase in deaths in 2024 as compared to the previous year, pointing to bolder strategies and more lethal operational tactics of Pakistani jihadist and insurgent groups.

Alarmingly, the non-state violent actors took the war to the Pakistani state to gain prominence and highlight their ideological causes and political grievances. The eroding writ of the state in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s southern districts like Bannu, D. I. Khan, and Lakki Marwat, as well as the deployment of the Levies Force in Balochistan to protect the military camps brings into sharp focus the deteriorating security situation.

Three key factors account for the growing lethality and resilience of terrorist and insurgent groups in Pakistan.

First, the mergers and alliances among Pakistani insurgent and jihadist groups have enabled them to improve their operational tactics, resulting in higher casualties among the security forces. Mergers and alliances enable terrorist groups to minimize their losses by combining their resources, dividing tasks, and extending their physical reach as well as maximizing their gains, such as gaining publicity and attracting new recruits and funding. Alliances are positively linked to a group’s lifecycle and battlefield efficacy: the more allies a group has, the longer it survives and the more lethal it becomes.

In 2024, at least 17 militant factions pledged allegiance to TTP chief Nur Wali Mehsud, including nine from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, four from Balochistan, three from Sindh, and one from Punjab. Reaching farther back, since July 2020, 65 jihadist factions across Pakistan have merged with the TTP. Jihadist groups like Lashkar-e-Islam and the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group have also cooperated with each other in joint attacks against the security forces. Likewise, the Baloch separatists are maintaining a coalition, Baloch Raji Ajoi Sagar (BRAS), formed in 2018, enabling them to launch more sophisticated attacks in 2024.

Second, the external sanctuaries of the TTP and Baloch separatists in Afghanistan and Iran, respectively, have also added to their lethality. External sanctuaries play a key role in sustaining militant campaigns against the target states and make their elimination difficult. Critically, external sanctuaries allow insurgent and militant groups to keep their strategic assets and top leaders out of harm’s way and provide them a safe space to recruit, radicalize, fundraise and plan attacks.

The Taliban’s return to power has rejuvenated the TTP’s militant campaign against Pakistan. The TTP’s Afghan sanctuaries act as a force multiplier in expanding its footprint beyond the Newly Merged Districts to the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Furthermore, the TTP’s leaders are not only providing strategic guidance to their cadres in Pakistan but playing a critical role in formulating the group’s ideological narrative as well.

Similarly, Baloch separatist groups operate from the safety of their hideouts in Iran by exploiting tribal linkages, porous borders, and low-key Iran-Pakistan proxy war. These sanctuaries have seriously limited the efficacy of kinetic means to eradicate insurgent and jihadist groups, undermining Pakistan’s internal security.

Islamabad will have to combine its security capabilities with adroit diplomacy to gain cooperation from Kabul and Tehran to close these sanctuaries.

Third, the Pakistani establishment’s political interference in the civilian sphere has distracted it from its core responsibility of securing the borders and maintaining internal security. The ongoing and never-ending tussle between the establishment and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), which is ruling Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province most affected by terrorism, has unfortunately politicized counterterrorism. Political point-scoring and infighting have undermined the critical consensus required to take on terrorist groups.

When it was announced in June, various sections in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa opposed the Azm-i-Istehkam strategy. Similarly, the establishment’s manipulation of elections in Balochistan and the imposition of handpicked governments have not only eroded people’s trust in the political process, pushing alienated educated youth toward insurgency, but undermined the legitimacy of counterinsurgency campaigns as well.

Pakistan’s terrorist challenge is likely to get worse in 2025 for two reasons. First, the political infighting between the establishment and the PTI is unlikely to subside, negatively impacting the efforts to curb terrorism. Second, due to its domestic economic challenges and the lack of external funding for counterterrorism, Pakistan does not have the financial bandwidth to launch a large-scale counterterrorism operation. Hitherto, the expedited intelligence-based operations under the Azm-i-Istehkam strategy have proven only tactically effective.

Keeping in view the above, Pakistan will have to reimagine both its security and political paradigms. If the political bickering between the establishment and the largest political party, the PTI, continues, it will only prove advantageous to groups like the TTP.

Likewise, Pakistan’s existing internal security paradigm has run its course. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, major gaps in Pakistan’s counterterrorism framework, which were reliant on Washington’s financial assistance, have been exposed. Hence, there is a need to come up with an indigenous and cost-effective counterterrorism policy.