The Road to Recovery: Countering the impacts of Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan

Since its independence in August 1947, Pakistan had to struggle with many issues. Pakistan struggled a lot with the economic crisis and political unrest. Due to its unstable conditions, there were 4 martial laws in the country as it was thought the political governments had failed to deliver according to the mark. Among the four martial laws, Pakistan saw economic and infrastructural development during the era of General Ayub Khan, General Zia ul Haq and General Musharraf. But apart from that, Pakistan also had to pay a high cost as it saw the development of the cold war in Afghanistan and the war on terror later on. The war on terror impacted the country as it saw a huge rise in terrorism-related incidents, including suicide bombing attacks, firing attacks, etc. The cost of the impacts of terrorism was so high that its horrors are still prevalent today in society. Statistics show a decline in the terrorism incident trends from 2015 to 2019, but from 2020 to 2022, the trend began to rise as approximately 1,000 fatalities were reported in 2022. According to the Global terrorism index 2022, Pakistan is the sixth country, amongst the whole world, that got affected by terrorism.

Terrorism not only affected the economy and the security of Pakistan, but it also had a destructive effect on the lives of the people as they were displaced and shattered in many ways. During the era of high terrorism incidents like suicide bombings in markets, schools and mosques, seeing the number of deaths and the highlights in the media, people were emotionally drained and frightened. Moreover, in the financial aspect, the properties and shops of people were destroyed by suicide bombings. This affected the traders and business community as their profits and earnings were destroyed. As there was no high support package for rebuilding infrastructure due to the economic vows of the country, people were left helpless and felt destitute in all manners. In 2014, when the country faced the worst terrorist attack of APS Peshawar that killed 135 school children, families and children were psychologically affected. When the APS incident occurred, the hearts of the mothers were left burning, and the children were left dead, with their faces showing signs of screams that called someone in agony.

After the APS incident, Operation ZarbeAzb was conducted by the army. It instilled hope in people, as it was determined to destroy militant safe heavens and the operational capacity of taliban terrorists. The country got a positive outcome from this operation as the security situation of the country improved. The National Action Plan (NAP) was also enacted to combat talibanization, hate speech, extremism and terrorism. It intends to control madrassahs through madrassah reforms and counter the extremist ideologies spread through hate speech. It calls for enhancing the capacity of the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) for gathering intelligence, strengthening Pakistan’s criminal justice system regarding terrorism-related trials, and improving the capability of law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, in 2017, the launch of Operation Raddul Fasad aimed to eliminate terrorism by focusing on urban areas in Pakistan. Large terrorist networks were targeted, and their support infrastructure and extremist ideologies were crushed.

Due to the operations initiated by the Pakistan armed forces, the frequency of terrorist attacks decreased, and urban center security improved along with the disruption of terrorist networks. Furthermore, political governments also have a bigger role in combating terrorism. The NAP must be implemented completely. There is also a need for unity amongst the political parties and organizations. The way of changing policies after the coming of a new successive federal government should be shunned. The country's stakeholders, institutions and political parties should be on one page regarding the policies of combating terror and eliminating hate speech and terror ideologies.