Ajit Kumar Singh
“The bickering nation”. This one sentence aptly describes the current state of Pakistan, where the two major terrorist/insurgent formations – the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella group of 56 terrorist outfits, and the Baloch insurgents – have created havoc. A third terrorist group – the Islamic State – is also on a rampage. Meanwhile, the political landscape is turbulent, while the economy is in complete disarray.
Indeed, within a span of a week, between March 10 and March 16, 2025, Pakistan recoded at least 38 terrorist attacks, resulting in 104 confirmed deaths [including 14 civilians, 45 Security Force (SF) personnel and 45 terrorists). Unconfirmed reports, however, put the death toll to 406.
In the deadliest attack during this period, one that was brazenly audacious even by the Pakistani standards, on March 11, militants hijacked a train, the Jaffar Express, with over 400 passengers-onboard, after they blew up the railway track between Quetta, Balochistan, and Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which took responsibility for the attack at Dhadar in the Bolan area of Balochistan, according to varying media reports, freed around 80 passengers, mostly women and children, but held hundreds of other passengers, most of them Pakistani Army personnel, hostage. They were demanding that authorities release jailed militants.
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