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September23, 2021
Terrorist and Other Militant Groups in Pakistan
U.S. officials have identified Pakistan as a base of
operations and/or target for numerous armed, nonstate
militant groups, some of which have existed since the
1980s. Notable terrorist and other groups operating in
and/orlaunching attacks on Pakistanare offive broad, but
not exclusive types: (1) globally-oriented; (2) Afghanistan-
oriented; (3) India- and Kashmir-oriented; (4) domestically-
oriented; and 5) sectarian (anti-Shia). Twelve of the fifteen
groups listed below are designated as Foreign Terrorist
Organizations (FTOs) under U.S. law and most, but not all,
are animated by Islamist extremist ideology. Pakistan has
suffered considerably fromdomestic terrorismsince2003,
and related fatalities peaked in 2009 (see Figure 1). Many
observers predict a resurgence ofregio nal terrorismand
militancy in the wake of the Afghan Taliban's August2021
successes.
Figure 1. Terrorism-Related Fatalities in Pakistan,
2000-2020
Fatalities
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
N 04d N r4 ri 04 P7 N ~N N M17 N N 04fd J N. N rN Y...N
Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal (New Delhi)
According to the U.S. State Department's Country Reports
on Terrorism 2019 (released in June 2020), Pakistan has
continued to serve as a safe haven for certain regionally
focused terrorist groups, and has allowed groups targeting
Afghanistan... as well as groups targeting India ... to
operate fromits territory [emphasis added]. The
Department noted modest steps taken by Pakistan's
government to counterterrorismfinancing and to restrain
some India-focused militant groups following an early 2019
terrorist attackin Indian-administered Kashmir. It assessed,
however, thatIslamabadhasyetto take decisiveactions
against India- and Afghanistan-focusedmilitants, and that
progress on the mostdifficult aspects ofits 2015 National
Action Plan to counter terrorismremains unfulfilled-
specifically its pledge to dismantle all terrorist
organizations without delay and discrimination. On the
topic of terrorist safe havens, the Department concluded
that Pakistan's government and military acted
inconsistently with respect to terrorist s afe havens
throughout the country. Authorities did not take sufficient
action to stop certain terrorist groups and individuals from
openly operating in the country.
In 2018, the Paris -based intergovernmental Financial
Action Task Force (FATF) returned Pakistanto its gray
list of countries found to have strategic deficiencies in
countering money laundering and terrorist financing, where
it had been from2012 to 2015. In 2020, a senior State
Department officialsaid, Completionofthe FATF action
plan is critical to Pakistan's economic reformefforts ... as
well as for demonstrating sustained and irreversible action
against allmilitant groups based in Pakis tan without
distinction.... [I]f Pakistan were not to meet FATF
obligations or were to fail and be blacklisted, that would be
devastating for Pakistan's economic reformprogram and
for its ability to attract investors. FATF's blacklist
designates high-risk and non-cooperativejurisdictions. In
mid-2021, FATF assessed that Pakistanhad completed 26
of 27 recommended action plan items and left the
country's gray list status unchanged.
Globally-Oriented Militants
Al Qaeda (AQ) core was establishedby Osama bin
Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan and was designated by the
United States as an FTO in 1999. U.S.-led forces expelled
AQ from Afghanistan following the group's commis s ion of
the September2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Since then, AQhas operated primarily from the former
Federally Administered TribalAreas (FATA, now
incorporated into Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province; see Figure 2) and in the megacity of Karachi, as
well as in Afghanistan. It has since 2011 been led by
Ayman al-Zawahiri and reportedly maintains supportive
ties with many of the groups listed below.
Figure 2. Map of Pakistan
Source: CRS. Boundaries from U.S. Department of State and ESRI.
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