Nurtured terror for decades, Pakistan tops Global Index

Pakistan’s long-standing strategy of backing militant groups for strategic depth and cultivated terror networks as instruments of foreign policy for decades has put the country first on the GTI for the first time. The Institute for Economics and Peace released its Global Terrorism Index 2026 on Friday. Pakistan recorded 1,139 terrorism-related deaths and 1,045 incidents in 2025, its worst toll in over a decade. Even as the world saw a decline in violence, Pakistan witnessed a 6 percent rise in deaths, making it a clear outlier. The data points to a worsening internal security situation rather than a temporary spike. Incidents in Pakistan are now six times higher than in 2020, reflecting a sustained deterioration.The two provinces doing most of the dying are Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, with 74 per cent of attacks and 67 per cent of deaths.
The GTI's borderlands analysis traces the geography of Pakistan's tribal belt, which was for decades a semi-governed sanctuary for the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, and eventually the TTP itself. Ethnic Pashtun continuity across the Durand Line allowed terrorists to move freely. Pakistani madrassas inside Afghan refugee camps were the ideological incubators for many of the people who would become the Taliban, and later, the TTP.
After two years at the top, Burkina Faso was overthrown by Pakistan, which now holds the top spot for the first time in the Index’s history. The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 has reversed that equation, with militant groups now using Afghan territory as a base to launch attacks inside Pakistan.Pakistan saw the highest number of terrorist killings since 2013. TTP alone was responsible for 595 attacks and 637 fatalities, a 13% increase from the year before. The group, a Deobandi Islamist organisation founded in 2007, has close operational and theological ties to al-Qaeda. 
Despite the fact that the IEP report makes no mention of Indian support, Pakistani officials have spent years and will continue to blame New Delhi for every explosion on their turf. While Islamabad yells about Indian proxies, the data subtly indicates that terrorist organisations were fostered in Pakistan and provided sanctuary in Afghanistan.
The problem of jihadists is not abstract. It has its roots in radical Islamist networks that Pakistan has either supported, tolerated, or engaged. The epicentre of terrorism in the subcontinent will stay in Pakistan, as shown by the 2026 Index, unless Islamabad addresses this internal ideological disease rather than shifting the responsibility across the border.
The report also notes the deterioration of Pakistan-India relations after the Pahalgam terror attack and India's response in the form of Operation Sindoor. The structural conditions the GTI identifies as driving Pakistan's crisis are not the product of geography or misfortune, but the accumulated outcome of policy choices made across multiple governments and military tenures.