| 2011 Chitral cross-border attacks | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Pakistan |  Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
26 soldiers killed 10 policemen killed | 25 militants killed | ||||||
The 2011 Chitral cross-border attacks were a series of attacks that occurred in the Chitral district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The attacks were carried out by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who crossed from Afghanistan.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had escalated their attacks in the western regions of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Numerous Pakistani Taliban fighters had sought refuge in Afghanistan as a response to military operations conducted by the Pakistani Army. In Afghanistan, they joined forces with allies to regroup and pose a threat to the border regions of Pakistan. [1] [2]
On 28 August 2011, 300 Taliban fighters infiltrated from Afghanistan and carried out a pre-dawn assault on Pakistani paramilitary posts situated in the Chitral district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. [1] [3] This attack commenced by hundreds of Taliban fighters at approximately 4 am and persisted throughout the day. [4] The death toll for the Pakistani Army resulted from this cross-border attack increased to 32–36, with the recovery of six additional bodies belonging to Chitral scouts. [1] [5] [6] [7]
The assault was aimed at checkpoints located in the border village of Arandu in the Chitral district, situated directly across from Afghanistan's Nuristan province. [3] These militants were believed to be affiliated with Pakistani Taliban factions that had previously sought to gain control in the Swat Valley. However, they were compelled to escape into Afghanistan in 2009 due to a successful military operation conducted by the Pakistani military. [2]
Pakistan formally registered a protest with the Afghan government regarding attacks. The Afghan Charge d’Affairs was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to convey this protest. Pakistan expressed its expectation that both ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and the Afghan National Army would take concrete measures to prevent such incursions by militants and bolster border security to prevent such incidents from recurring. [7]
Terrorism in Pakistan, according to the Ministry of Interior, poses a significant threat to the people of Pakistan. The wave of terrorism in Pakistan is believed to have started in 2000. Attacks and fatalities in Pakistan were on a "declining trend" between 2015 and 2019, but has gone back up from 2020-2022, with 971 fatalities in 2022.
A series of occasional armed skirmishes and firefights have occurred along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border between the Afghan Armed Forces and the Pakistan Armed Forces since 1949. The latest round of hostilities between the two countries began in April 2007. Militants belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar also use Afghanistan's territory to target Pakistani security personnel deployed along the border. The Diplomat says that the presence of terrorists belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan on Afghan soil is the reason for sporadic shelling of Afghanistan's territory by Pakistani security forces.
The insurgency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also known as the War in North-West Pakistan or Pakistan's war on terror, is an ongoing armed conflict involving Pakistan and Islamist militant groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jundallah, Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI), TNSM, al-Qaeda, and their Central Asian allies such as the ISIL–Khorasan (ISIL), Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, East Turkistan Movement, Emirate of Caucasus, and elements of organized crime. Formerly a war, it is now a low-level insurgency as of 2017.
Fazal Hayat, more commonly known by his pseudonym Mullah Fazlullah, was an Islamist militant who was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, and was the leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Swat Valley. On 7 November 2013, he became the emir of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and presided over the descent of the group into factions who are often at war with each other. Fazlullah was designated by the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee of the Security Council in 2015, and was added to the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice wanted list on 7 March 2018. Fazlullah was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan on 14 June 2018.
Lashkar-e-Islam, also written as Laskhar-i-Islam, is a Deobandi jihadist terrorist group operating in Khyber District, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan and the neighboring Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Taliban, officially called the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, is an umbrella organization of various Islamist armed militant groups operating along the Afghan–Pakistani border. Formed in 2007 by Baitullah Mehsud, its current leader is Noor Wali Mehsud, who has publicly pledged allegiance to the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban share a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban and have assisted them in the 2001–2021 war, but the two groups have separate operation and command structures.
Events in the year 2014 in Pakistan.
On 8 June 2014, 10 militants armed with automatic weapons, a rocket launcher, suicide vests, and grenades attacked Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan. 36 people were killed, including all 10 attackers, and 18 others were wounded. The militant organisation Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) initially claimed responsibility for the attack. According to state media, the attackers were foreigners of Uzbek origin who belonged to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an Al Qaeda-linked militant organisation that works closely with TTP. The TTP later confirmed that the attack was a joint operation they executed with the IMU, who independently admitted to having supplied personnel for the attack.
Operation Zarb-e-Azb was a joint military offensive conducted by the Pakistan Armed Forces against various militant groups, including the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, al-Qaeda, Jundallah and Lashkar-e-Islam. The operation was launched on 15 June 2014 in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a renewed effort against militancy in the wake of the 8 June attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, for which the TTP and the IMU claimed responsibility. As of 14 July 2014, the operation internally displaced about 929,859 people belonging to 80,302 families from North Waziristan.
Khyber was the code-name for a 2014–2017 military offensive conducted by Pakistan's military in the Khyber Agency in four phases; Khyber-1, Khyber-2, Khyber-3 and Khyber-4.
On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The terrorists, all of whom were foreign nationals, comprising one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans, entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children, killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren ranging between eight and eighteen years of age, making it the world's fifth deadliest school massacre. Pakistan launched a rescue operation undertaken by the Pakistan Army's Special Services Group (SSG) special forces, who killed all six terrorists and rescued 960 people. In the long term, Pakistan established the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism.
The 2015 Camp Badaber attack occurred on 18 September 2015, when 14 Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants attempted to storm Camp Badaber, a Pakistan Air Force base located in Badaber, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The attack killed 25–29 security personnel, including Captain Asfandyar Bukhari of the Pakistan Army, who was responding to the attack as part of a quick-reaction force. All 14 militants were killed in combat with Pakistani forces, according to claims by security officials. The attack, claimed by the TTP to be in retaliation for the Pakistan Armed Forces' Operation Zarb-e-Azb, was the first of its kind in its intensity, and the well-armed TTP militants engaged Pakistani forces at Camp Badaber in a protracted battle that resulted in heavier losses than those inflicted in previous attacks on military installations. PAF Camp Badaber is located about 48 kilometres (30 mi) east of the Afghanistan–Pakistan border.
Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad is a codename of a combined military operation by the Pakistani military in support of local law enforcement agencies to disarm and eliminate the terrorist sleeper cells across all states of Pakistan, started on 22 February 2017. The operation is aimed to eliminate the threat of terrorism, and consolidating the gains of Operation Zarb-e-Azb which was launched in 2014 as a joint military offensive. It is further aimed at ensuring the security of Pakistan's borders. The operation is ongoing active participation from Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, Pakistan Navy, Pakistan Police and other Warfare and Civil Armed Forces managed under the Government of Pakistan. More than 375,000 operations have been carried out against terrorists so far. This Operation has been mostly acknowledged after Operation Zarb e Azb.
On 1 December 2017, 3–4 gunmen arrived at the hostel of Agricultural Training Institute at Agricultural University Peshawar and started firing as a result of which at least 13 people were killed and 35+ were injured. Tehreek-e-Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
On 16 April 2022, the Pakistani military conducted predawn airstrikes on multiple targets in Afghanistan's Khost and Kunar provinces. Afghan officials said the attacks killed at least 47 civilians and injured 23 others. Initial reports described the attacks as either rocket strikes or aerial strikes carried out by a number of aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force, and Afghan officials claimed the operation was carried out by Pakistani military helicopters and jets. Pakistani officials initially denied Pakistan carried out the airstrikes, but Pakistani security officials later claimed the airstrikes involved drone strikes from inside Pakistani airspace, and that no aircraft were deployed. Some reports said the Pakistani airstrikes also targeted parts of Paktika Province.
On 13 September 2022, five people, including the former head of the Peace Committee and two policemen, were killed in a bomb blast in Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In a statement, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has accepted the responsibility for the blast, but the authorities have not yet confirmed this claim.
The events listed below are both anticipated and scheduled for the year 2023 in Pakistan.
This article is an incomplete outline of terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2023 in chronological order.
The 2023 Chitral cross-border attacks were a series of clashes that occurred near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. On 7 September 2023, the TTP attacked five military checkposts from Afghan territory, killing 4 Pakistani soldiers. In response, the Pakistani military thwarted the attack and killed 12 TTP insurgents.
On 12 December 2023, Islamist insurgent group Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan attacked a police station in Daraban, Dera Ismail Khan District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, killing at least 23 people.