Pakistani warplanes bombed a village in the country’s northwest in the fall of 2007, killing around 50 people.
The air strikes occurred in the district of North Waziristan during the height of militancy in the South Asian country.
“That was the darkest era of terrorism,” said Adil Dawar, a local activist whose uncle and cousin were among those killed in the attack.
Northwestern Pakistan, a stronghold of Al-Qaeda and the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was the scene of deadly Pakistani counterterrorism operations and U.S. drone strikes. Militants, meanwhile, terrorized the local population.
Eighteen years on, the TTP is resurgent, and the region has witnessed a sharp uptick in violence.
“Today, the situation is as bad as the previous era of terrorism,” said Dawar.
Soaring Violence
Last year was the deadliest for Pakistani security forces in nearly a decade, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS).
In its annual report, the Islamabad-based think tank reported 685 fatalities among security personnel, a nearly 40 percent increase compared to 2023.
The number of militant attacks in Pakistan in 2024, meanwhile, rose by 70 percent compared to the year before, said the Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), another think tank in Islamabad.
Many of the attacks were carried out by the TTP, which is active in northwestern Pakistan, as well as the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist militant group which has wreaked havoc in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
Experts said the Taliban takeover of neighboring Afghanistan in 2021 boosted the fighting capabilities of armed groups in the region.
Some of the American military gear and weapons left behind after the U.S. military withdrawal and seized by the Taliban have turned up and been used by the TTP and Baluch armed groups.
The TTP and Afghan Taliban have close ideological and organizational ties. Pakistan has accused the Afghan Taliban of sheltering the Pakistani militants.
Pakistan had hoped the Afghan Taliban, its longtime ally, would “control and neutralize” the TTP, said Amir Rana, the head of PIPS, the Islamabad-based think tank.
“Pakistan’s Taliban policy has backfired,” he said, adding that the Afghan Taliban has also provided some help to Baluch militants.
'Nobody Is Listening'
Observers have said Pakistan has resorted to brute force to crush the TTP and Baluch insurgencies and ignored the longstanding grievances of the Baluch and Pashtun ethnic minorities in southwestern and northwestern Pakistan, respectively.
Abuses by the government have boosted support for the insurgencies. The Pakistani Army, which has an oversized role in the country’s domestic and foreign affairs, has been accused of committing widespread human rights abuses.
Major military offensives aimed at uprooting militants have killed thousands of civilians and uprooted millions of others in the past two decades.
“The security state controls the entire state system,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a former lawmaker. “And the [army] is not listening.”
The Pakistani military has defended its actions, and claimed that it killed a “record” number of militants in 2024.
Ordinary Pakistanis find themselves stuck in the middle of the escalating fight between the military and the militants.
“People have lost their lives and properties both because of the militants and the security forces,” said Attiqullah Dawar.
In 2021, the lawyer in North Waziristan spent some eight months in the TTP’s captivity. He and his two cousins were freed after their family paid a $40,000 ransom.
Idress Mehsud, a member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, a civil rights group, is on the government’s terrorism watch list after he campaigned against the alleged abuses of the Pakistani security forces.
“It is a tragedy that the state is oppressing the very people who oppose terrorism,” Mehsud said.
