Pakistan has a long history of cultivating terror networks throughout the global arena. This time, it backfired on the Islamic nation after the Global Terrorism Index 2026 ranked it the first and most terror-affected country in 2025. The report mentioned that Pakistan witnessed 1,139 deaths, 1,045 attacks, 1,595 people injured, and 655 hostages last year.
2025 has been marked as the deadliest year for Islamabad since 2013, with a score of 8.574. In all of Southeast Asia, it's the only nation whose conditions have worsened in the previous year.
Pakistan has bred the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and al-Qaeda for decades. Among these, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has carried out the highest number of terror attacks. The outfit conducted 595 attacks and was responsible for 637 deaths, or 56 percent of all terrorism fatalities in Pakistan.
The number of targeted killings increased by 450 percent. The number of police deaths surged. Drones are now part of the group's operational toolset. Currently, between 6,000 and 6,500 TTP militants operate from within Afghanistan, utilizing the country as a staging area for cross-border assaults. Eighty-five percent of TTP attacks take place between ten and fifty kilometers of the Afghan border.
Pakistani madrasas were the breeding centres for individuals who would emerge as Taliban and later join TTP. The return of the Taliban in 2021 has created a safe path for the TTP. Islamabad has called on Kabul to curb the TTP. The Afghani Taliban has diminished. This marks the second part of a deal that started in the 1990s when Pakistan's security apparatus made a distinction between those that turned their weapons inward and what it internally classified as good Taliban, which were useful against Afghanistan and India. That distinction is no longer useful.
The GTI report also signifies the decline 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.
Top Countries in the GTI
African countries dominated the top 10 list in the 2026 Global Terrorism Index, including Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to the 2026 Global Terrorism Index, India ranks 13th on the list, with a score of 6.43, with the country recording more than 142 terror-related incidents, more than 100 fatalities, and 118 injuries in 2025.
Iran is ranked 18th in the Global Terrorism Index 2026, while the US is placed in the 28th spot.
The Global Terrorism Index is a detailed study analysing the impact of terrorism for 163 countries covering 99.7 per cent of the world’s population.
In 2025, the report pointed out that deaths from terrorism fell by 28 per cent to 5,582, and incidents decreased by 22 per cent to 2,944, marking the lowest figures since 2007.