Terrorist attacks in Pakistan saw 42% increase in 2021
Pakistan witnessed 42 per cent increase in terrorist attacks in 2021 compared to the previous year as the developments in Afghanistan had already started influencing its militant landscape and security.
A total of 207 reported incursions in the year claimed 335 lives, an increase of 52 per cent from those killed in such attacks in 2020, and left 555 people injured.
These statistics were revealed in ‘Pakistan Security Report 2021′ by Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS). The report provides comprehensive data on violent incidents, comparative analysis of various security variables, the changing targets and tactics of militants, and the nature of state responses.
The report said 2021 was the first time since 2013 that the number of terrorist attacks posted an upsurge or reversal, in a gradually declining trend.
Those 335 killed in terrorist attacks included 177 security personnel, 126 civilians, and 32 militants. Similarly, as many as 66 per cent of attacks targeted security personnel, their vehicles, and checkpoints across Pakistan.
The report also noted that despite repeated promises of not allowing any element to use the Afghan soil against Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban have yet not seriously considered acting against or influencing the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in support of Pakistani concerns, except having facilitated the talks between Pakistani government and the banned organisation which have also not reaped any results yet.
Meanwhile, the report said that the Taliban’s response to border fencing is only adding to Pakistan’s security concerns and challenges.
It noted that violent and non-violent shades of religious extremism presented a critical challenge to Pakistan’s efforts to counter terrorism and achieve security and social harmony in the country.
PIPS report said that in 2021, multiple events and developments indicated that a persisting challenge of religious extremism and intolerance confronted Pakistan including the reported upsurge in terrorist violence by the extremist groups, growing incidents of faith-based mob violence, episodes of protests by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) activists and their clashes with security forces, as well as the overall environment in which minorities continued to feel insecure and persecuted.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) witnessed the highest number of terrorist attacks for any one region of Pakistan in 2021, where a total of 111 attacks claimed 169 lives and inflicted injuries on 122 people.
Balochistan was the second most affected region by terrorism where 136 people were killed and 345 were injured in 81 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Baloch insurgents as well as religiously inspired militant groups.
Some eight terrorist attacks took place in Sindh province including five in Karachi and three in interior Sindh, killing 13 people and injuring 35.
A combined total of seven terrorist attacks were recorded in Punjab and Islamabad in which 17 people lost their lives.
The TTP and affiliates, Baloch insurgents, and Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) province were the major actors of violence in 2021.
The TTP was believed to be involved in 87 terrorist attacks including 78 in KP, five in Balochistan, and four in Punjab and Islamabad. This is an increase of about 84 per cent from the attacks it perpetrated across Pakistan in 2020 while these attacks by the proscribed organisation claimed 158 lives.
Different Baloch insurgent groups carried out 74 terrorist attacks in Pakistan including 71 in Balochistan and three in Karachi which claimed 96 lives and injured 151 others. As many as 63, or over 85 per cent, of these attacks were carried out by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) alone, the report said.
The IS-K affiliates perpetrated a total of eight terrorist attacks including seven in KP and one in Balochistan. In all, 21 people lost their lives and four were injured.
Up to 42 per cent from the year before, 207 terrorist attacks were reported in Pakistan in 2021 including five suicide blasts.
Perpetrated by different nationalist insurgent, religiously inspired militant, and violent sectarian groups, these attacks claimed 335 lives, an increase of 52 per cent from those killed in such attacks in 2020, and injured 555 people.
The religiously inspired militant groups such as the TTP, local Taliban groups, IS-K, etc, perpetrated a combined total of 128 terrorist attacks, compared to 95 in 2020, which killed 236 people and injured 278 others.
Different Balochi and Sindhi nationalist insurgent groups carried out 77 attacks, as compared to 44 such attacks in 2020, which claimed 97 lives and wounded another 255 people.
Meanwhile, compared to seven in 2020, two sectarian-related terrorist attacks were recorded in 2021 claiming as many lives and inflicting injuries on 22 people.
Further, the security personnel suffered significant casualties in terrorist attacks in 2021 as 177 were dead and 218 injured.
Among those 177 dead were 65 army officials, 53 policemen, 48 Frontier Constabulary (FC) personnel; six Levies, four unspecified paramilitary soldiers; and one Rangers official.
Similarly, 126 civilians also lost their lives and another 328 were wounded in these attacks.
Meanwhile, 32 militants were killed and another nine were injured, either in suicide blasts or security forces’ retaliatory fire following some attacks.
Compared to 17 in the year before, the terrorists targeted over 22 types of diverse sites. However, they targeted security forces quite frequently.
Out of the total 207 terrorist attacks recorded in 2021, as many as 137, or over 66 per cent, targeted personnel, vehicles, and security checkpoints. The civilians were hit in 16 attacks.
Meanwhile, the terrorists targeted pro-government tribesmen and peace committees’ members in nine attacks; political leaders/workers in seven attacks; government officials, institutions, and state symbols in another seven attacks; polio vaccination workers and their security escorts in six attacks; and non-Baloch workers and settlers in Balochistan in five attacks.
They also targeted Chinese workers in four different attacks while a combined total of three attacks targeted members of Shia and Sunni communities.
The terrorists mainly used improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and direct infantry fire as primary attack tactics. Besides carrying out five suicide blasts, they employed IEDs of various types in 80 attacks and direct firing/shootout in 102 attacks. As many as 15 terrorist attacks were incidents of hand grenade blasts.
The terrorists also used other attack tactics, though less frequently, including three rocket attacks, one coordinated gun-and-bomb attack, and one act of abduction.
As in the previous year, KP witnessed the highest number of terrorist attacks for any one region of Pakistan.
A total of 111 such attacks happened in the province, including 53 in the twin Waziristan tribal districts alone, which in total claimed 169 lives and inflicted injuries on 122 people as North Waziristan remained a major flashpoint of insecurity and militant violence in KP like the past few years.
Compared to 31 in 2020, as many as 37 terrorist attacks took place in the district in 2021, or over 33 per cent of the total reported attacks from KP, which killed 50 people and injured 27 others.
Meanwhile, 16 terrorist attacks were reported in South Waziristan and another 12 in Bajaur tribal district claiming a combined total of 48 lives. Eight attacks also took place in the provincial capital Peshawar, killing nine people.
Other KP districts where three or more attacks took place in the year included Bannu, DI Khan, Lakki Marwat, Lower Dir, Mardan, Orakzai, and Tank. A single attack targeting a bus carrying Chinese workers in Kohistan claimed 14 lives.
While over 71 per cent of the reported attacks from KP targeted security forces and law enforcement personnel, another six attacks hit either polio vaccination teams or their police escorts.
Pro-government tribal elders and political leaders were other prime targets, which were hit by the terrorists in a total of 12 attacks.
The TTP and affiliated local Taliban groups perpetrated most of the attacks in KP while IS-K also claimed a few attacks reported from South Waziristan, Peshawar, Kurram, and Bajaur districts including a suicide blast.
Balochistan was the second most affected region by terrorism after KP where 136 people were killed and 345 others were injured in 81 terrorist attacks perpetrated by Baloch insurgents as well as religiously inspired militant groups.
Different Baloch insurgent groups remained active in the province including the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), BRAS – an alliance of Baloch insurgent groups mainly including BLA, BLF and Baloch Republican Guard (BRG) – Lashkar-e-Balochistan, Baloch Republican Army (BRA), and United Baloch Army (UBA), etc.
These Baloch groups perpetrated 71 attacks in Balochistan killing 95 people and wounding 234 others.
The attacks by Baloch insurgent groups concentrated in 17 districts of the province but most of them were recorded in Kech (19 attacks), Quetta (18), Sibi (seven), and Panjgur (six).
Similarly, most attacks by Baloch insurgents targeted security forces and law enforcement personnel (47 attacks or 66 per cent). These included at least six major attacks in each of which at least four or more security personnel, mainly FC officials, lost their lives.
Other targets frequently hit by Baloch insurgents included civilians (seven attacks), government officials, institutions, and state symbols (six attacks), and non-Baloch settlers and workers (five attacks).
Meanwhile, religiously inspired militant groups such as the TTP and the IS-K and some other similar unknown militants were reportedly involved in as many as 10 attacks in Balochistan. These attacks took 41 lives and left 111 people injured.
Most attacks by religiously inspired militants were high-impact ones including two suicide blasts in Quetta by the TTP which killed a combined total of 10 people and injured 50 others. A single attack by the IS-K killed 11 coal miners in the Bolan district.
Out of the total 10 attacks carried out by so-called religiously inspired militants in the province, six happened in Quetta, another three in Qilla Abdullah, and one in Bolan.
Four of these attacks hit security forces, another three civilians, while one attack each targeted Hazara Shias, a madrasa, and an event organised by a religious-political party.
In all, eight terrorist attacks took place in Sindh province including five in Karachi and three in interior Sindh with one attack each in Khairpur, Naushahro Firoze, and Qambar-Shahdadkot.
These attacks killed a total of 13 people and injured 35 others. Six of the reported attacks from Sindh in 2021 were perpetrated by Baloch and Sindhi nationalist insurgents, mainly BLA, BLF, and Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army (SRA), which claimed two lives and wounded 21 people.
In Karachi, the outlawed BLF carried out two attacks against Chinese nationals while BLA perpetrated one attack targeting Rangers.
The SRA carried out three attacks including one in each of three districts of interior Sindh cited earlier targeting security forces, a railway track, and political leaders.
Apart from nationalist insurgents, an unknown militant group as well as a Shia sectarian group, Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan (SMP), also carried out one attack each in Karachi.
The attack by the former targeted a mini truck carrying family members of a Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leader hailing from Swat while the SMP militants shot and injured a renowned Sunni scholar Mufti Saleemullah Khan, belonging to the Banuri Town seminary.
Some five terrorist attacks took place in Punjab which claimed 14 lives and injured 51 people. Two of them were perpetrated by the TTP in Rawalpindi, which killed two and injured five policemen.
Some unknown militants carried out an IED blast near the residence of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) Chief Hafiz Saeed in Lahore killing three people.
Meanwhile, six people were murdered while five others sustained injuries by the firing of a religiously inspired extremist individual in DG Khan.
In a sectarian-related terrorist attack reported from Bahawalnagar, two mourners were killed, and 24 were injured in a grenade attack on an Ashura procession.
Two terrorist attacks were recorded in Islamabad in which the banned TTP killed three policemen and injured two others.
Despite an increase in the number of terrorist attacks from the year before, the overall incidents of violence plummeted from 373 in 2020 to 326 in 2021.
The decrease in overall violent incidents was largely contributed by a significant decrease in the number of cross-border attacks from the year before.
However, the overall death toll in these violent incidents increased by over 21 per cent; from 503 in 2020 to 609 in 2021. Similarly, the number of people injured in all such incidents of violence also increased from 851 in 2020 to 1,045 in 2021.
For the second time since 2009, the number of terrorist attacks posted an upsurge in the year 2021; the first such exception happened in 2013. Otherwise, there has been a gradual decline in the incidents of terrorist violence and consequent casualties since 2009.
The continuous operational and surveillance campaigns by security forces and police’s counter-terrorism departments (CTDs) and some counter-extremism actions taken under the National Action Plan (NAP) had apparently been contributing to the declining trend in terrorism.
However, the reversal of the declining trend in 2021 suggests the militants have once again increased their presence and activities in Pakistan.
Source: Bolnews
