‘In decline since 2015, violence in Pakistan shot up by 42pc last year’

Violence-related casualties in Pakistan had been on a steady decline since 2015, somewhat plateauing in 2020, but they seemed to have dramatically accelerated in 2021 again.

This was the main finding of the annual statistics collated and compiled by the Centre for Research & Security Studies (CRSS), an Islamabad-based security think tank. After a consistent decline since 2015, violence in Pakistan increased by an alarming 42 per cent in 2021, observed the CRSS report.

Muhammad Nafees, a CRSS senior fellow who compiled the statistics, said that after the victory of the Taliban in the neighbouring Afghanistan, attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have increased in the country.

“However, Karachi didn’t experience any escalation in violence after Taliban gaining power in Afghanistan,” Nafees told The News. He said that for some reason, Sindh and Punjab, particularly Karachi, have been relatively peaceful for the past three or four years.

Compared to the fatalities in 2020, all regions except Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan suffered an exponential surge in violence in 2021, with Balochistan accounting for a net 80 per cent increase (a total of 248) in violence-related fatalities, said the report. Compared to 2020, Punjab accounted for a 65 per cent rise in violence-related fatalities in 2021 (65 fatalities), while Sindh also saw a rise of 39 per cent (128 fatalities).

Commensurately, both security operations and terror attacks increased in 2021. A total of 146 security operations were carried out last year, leaving 298 outlaws dead — a rise of more than 40 per cent against the preceding year’s figures.

Similarly, a total of 403 terror attacks were carried out during 2021, compared to the 260 such attacks that were carried out during the year before last. Four suicide attacks took place in 2021, leaving 20 people dead, compared to two suicide attacks carried out in the preceding year and taking 10 lives.

An alarming upsurge of over 41 per cent was observed in the fatalities of security personnel in 2021, according to the CRSS report. The year before that, there had been a decline of 18 per cent in security personnel’s fatalities.

The percentage of outlaws, including militants, insurgents and other criminals, killed in 2021 was 26.5 per cent, while civilians accounted for the largest number of victims of violence.

“On the whole, the combined losses of civilian and security personnel’s lives were 74 per cent of the total fatalities, while the outlaws, the main perpetrators of violence, suffered one fourth of the total fatalities — a rise of militancy that can be attributed to the success of Taliban in Afghanistan that bolstered the morale of Pakistani militants operating from within and outside of the country,” observed the report.