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.
Baitullah Mehsud was one of the founders and a leading member of the TTP in Waziristan, Pakistan, and the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He formed the TTP from an alliance of about five militant groups in December 2007. He is thought by U.S. military analysts to have commanded up to 5,000 fighters and to have been behind numerous attacks in Pakistan including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto which he and others have denied.
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.
The Pakistani Taliban, formally 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.
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. In retaliation, 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 Counter Terrorism Department (Urdu: سررشتہِ تحقیقاتِ جرائم ، پاکستان; CTD) formerly known as the Crime Investigation Department (CID), are crime scene investigation, interrogation, anti-terrorism, and intelligence bureaus of the provincial police services of Pakistan.
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.
Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen is a Pakistani Pashtun human rights activist from South Waziristan. He is the chairman of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).
On 22 July 2018, 3 days before general elections, a suicide bomber blew himself near the vehicle of former KPK provincial minister of Agriculture Ikramullah Khan Gandapur in Kulachi, Dera Ismail Khan District, Pakistan. The prime target of attack, Gandapur was brought to Dera Ismail Khan in critical condition where he succumbed to his wounds. Apart from Gandapur, his driver and one of his guards was also killed and three more people were injured. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the assault describing Gandapur's killing of their colleague militants as the motive. The attack was widely condemned across Pakistan.
Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, also known as Abu Mansoor Asim, is a Pakistani Islamic scholar, cleric and jurist who is the 4th emir of the Pakistani Taliban. On 22 June 2018, Mehsud was appointed as the emir of TTP after the assassination of former emir Mullah Fazlullah in a US drone strike in Kunar, Afghanistan.
On 14 July 2021, a bus carrying Chinese workers in the Dasu area of Upper Kohistan District, Pakistan, fell into a ravine after an explosion, killing 13 people, including nine Chinese citizens and four Pakistanis, and injured 28 others.
Pakistan and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan peace talks was a ceasefire negotiation between the Pakistani government and banned terrorist organization namely Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. Its goal is ending a two-decades long war and hostilities in Pakistan. The talks are held in western Khost province of Afghanistan while the Taliban government played crucial role to bring both parties on the dialogue table. In October 2021 then-Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan expressed his view that "...if TTP surrender and accept Pakistan's law, then they will be free from charges." However, TTP denied the state of prime minister.
Terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2022 include:
On 4 March 2022, the Islamic State – Khorasan Province attacked a Shia mosque at Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The suicide attack, carried out by an Afghan man who was a long-term resident of Pakistan, killed at least 63 people and injured another 196. The Islamist terror group Islamic State – Khorasan Province 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, mostly women and children. Most of the people killed had been displaced from North Waziristan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, but the casualties in Kunar Province also included family members of a militant, according to locals. 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.
Many terrorist attacks targeting Chinese nationals have occurred in Pakistan. These attacks have been carried out by Pakistani terrorist organizations such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Pakistani Taliban. Chinese investment in Pakistan, the end of American policing of terrorism in the region, and the treatment of the Uyghur people in China have all contributed to an increase in terror attacks targeting China.
This article is an incomplete outline of terrorist incidents in Pakistan in 2023 in chronological order.
The 2023 Peshawar mosque bombing was a terrorist attack that killed 84 people on 30 January 2023, at around 1:30 p.m. PKT, in the city of Peshawar, in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. The mosque is located inside a high-security compound that includes the headquarters of the provincial police force and a counterterrorism department. At the time of the bombing, between 300 and 400 police officers were offering their Zuhr prayers.
Pakistan Army 
Frontier Corps 
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan 
