Terrorism is a complex and ever-evolving threat that affects countries and communities around the world. It also had a significant negative impact on Pakistan. The causes of this terrorism can be religious extremism, political oppression, or economic inequality.
Pakistan, for many years, has been victimised and recognised as a terrorist country. However, people are unable to justify that any country that itself has been facing bombings, killings, and attacks can be responsible for terrorism in the world.
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 have gone back up from 2020 to 2022 with 971 fatalities, among them 229 civilians, 379 security force personnel, and 363 terrorists. Certainly, Pakistani police and soldiers have died at the hands of radicals.
In 2019, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs reported that around 9,000 Pakistani security forces and more than twice as many civilians had died in terror and extremist violence since 2001.
On July 30, 2023, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province carried out a suicide bombing at a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) rally in Khar, Bajaur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, killing at least 63 people and injuring nearly 200 others. The blast took place at a gathering of the conservative Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) party in the former tribal area of Bajaur, which borders Afghanistan. A suicide bomber set off explosives at this political rally.
It is evident from this that every Pakistani person is affected by it. No single group or class was targeted, but all kinds of individuals have been victims of these incidents. Pakistan is a peaceful country and condemns all such incidents. From an ordinary citizen to a party level, and similarly from any organisation to a government level or political level, all kinds of people became its victims. About one-third of the victims in the suicide bombing in Pakistan’s Bajaur district were children. The dead included 23 people under the age of 18, including eight-year-old Musa Khan. We send our condolences to the impacted families. May Allah give patience to these families. May Allah grant these martyrs a high place in Jannat al-Firdous. Ameen.