2025 is set to be the deadliest year in more than a decade for Pakistan, after the number of deaths related to armed conflict rose by 74 percent, with militants accounting for more than half of the total death toll, according to a new report by an independent think tank.
Islamabad often accuses Kabul of turning a blind eye to cross-border attacks by Pakistani militants, which the Afghan Taliban government denies. Tensions between the two neighboring countries have been high since October, after border clashes in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded.
The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) reported that violence in Pakistan claimed a total of 3,413 lives in 2025, compared to 1,950 in 2024, with 2,138 militants killed.
The report said the 124 percent increase in militant deaths compared to 2024 reflects intense counterterrorism operations against the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is not part of the Afghan Taliban. This group has been increasing attacks on Pakistani security forces in recent years.
PICSS director Abdullah Khan said the high number of casualties was partly caused by an increase in suicide attacks, as well as the use of US military equipment left behind after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which later fell into the hands of the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups, increasing their operational capabilities.
Among those killed in 2025 were 667 members of the security forces, a 26 percent increase from the previous year and “the highest annual number since 2011,” Khan said.
He also stated that 580 civilians were killed, which is “the highest annual number since 2015”. In addition, 28 members of the pro-government peace committees were killed.
PICSS recorded at least 1,066 militant attacks in 2025, while the number of suicide attacks increased by 53 percent, with a total of 26 such incidents. Security forces arrested about 500 militants in intelligence-based operations last year, up from 272 in 2024, according to the report.
Khan added that most of the attacks in 2025 were claimed by multiple militant groups, including the TTP.
The PICSS report was released weeks after Pakistan’s military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry, said security forces had conducted 67,023 intelligence-based operations in 2025, killing 1,873 militants, including 136 Afghan nationals.
The border violence between Pakistan and Afghanistan followed the October 9 explosions in Kabul, which Afghanistan’s Taliban government blamed on Pakistan. The truce, brokered by Qatar, has largely held, although the two sides failed to reach an agreement in November, despite three rounds of talks held in Istanbul.
In December, Pakistan’s newly appointed chief of the armed forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir, called on the Afghan Taliban government to choose between maintaining relations with Islamabad or supporting the Pakistani Taliban.
(Vijesti.ba)
