Islamabad, May 17 (IANS) After Islamabad hosted the US-Iran peace talks, the Field Marshal Asim Munir-led Pakistan Army has received tremendous international media attention, despite being “incapable” of addressing the relentless wave of terror attacks in their homeland, a media report said.
According to the Global Terrorism Index 2026, Pakistan has, for the first time, topped the list of countries most affected by terrorism, editor Nitin J. Ticku wrote in the EurAsian Times.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounted for a staggering 74 per cent of these attacks and 67 per cent of the fatalities, the report said, adding that the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) have wreaked havoc on the Pakistani military and have, in fact, grown bolder, “more sophisticated, and more lethal”.
“While Asim Munir’s army was busy projecting power and hogging the global spotlight — mediating between the US and Iran, dispatching fighter jets and troops to Riyadh — it was shockingly losing ground at home to the very militant groups it once nurtured,” it said.
Since the outbreak of the US-Iran conflict in late February 2026, terror attacks within Pakistan have not only continued but also intensified in several regions, especially the ones bordering Afghanistan.
Ticku notes that earlier this year, the BLA carried out one of its most coordinated attacks in years, launching strikes across at least nine districts, including the capital Quetta and the port city of Gwadar. The attacks reportedly targeted police stations, banks, markets, and security installations, killing dozens of civilians and soldiers.
He mentioned that in February, a major suicide bombing struck a Shia mosque in Islamabad, killing at least 31 worshippers. The attack, one of the deadliest in the capital in recent years, was widely attributed to ISIS-Khorasan. In one notable incident in April, a car bombing at a police post in Fateh Khel killed over 20 officers.
In a very rare incident, the Baloch insurgents also ambushed a Coast Guard patrol near Gwadar, killing three officials. “It was the first recorded incident of the BLA attacking a Pakistani maritime vessel,” the editor highlighted.
Giving an account of the attacks in May, Ticku reminded that on May 7, six people, including two children, were killed when mortar shells hit a market in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan.
On May 10, militants detonated a car bomb at a checkpoint in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and opened fire on police, killing at least 15 and wounding three. According to officials, gunmen stormed the police checkpost after the car blast, opening fire.
Further, he noted that a suicide bomber in a three-wheel vehicle laden with explosives killed at least nine people on May 12 and wounded 34 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
At least five soldiers and seven militants were killed in clashes in Balochistan on May 14. In another attack the next day, militants attacked a security compound in northwest Pakistan with an explosives-laden truck and gunfire, killing at least nine paramilitary officers.
Ticku argued that Field Marshal Asim Munir’s forces are struggling to secure their own cantonments and border regions despite projecting strength abroad — be it in Riyadh or in brokering talks in Islamabad.
–IANS
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