Tehreek-i-Taliban is making its way back in Pakistan

According to the January 2023 report of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, the country saw a 27-percent increase in terror attacks in 2022 compared to 2021. The outlawed, Afghanistan-based Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan was a "major actor of violence in the year," the report stated. A total of 262 attacks took place, which claimed 419 lives and injured 734 people. About 95 percent of the attacks took place in two provinces: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Most of the public analysis of this resurgence in terrorism – especially attacks by militant groups such as the TTP and the Islamic State-Khorasan – explains it as a direct outcome of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021. There is no denying that the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan had a crucial impact – for instance, soon afterwards the Taliban released many senior TTP commanders and fighters from Afghanistan's jails, allowing the TTP to regroup and reorganise under Noor Wali Mehsud, the current emir of the group. But the fall of Kabul was not the only factor that allowed the TTP to restart its terror campaign in Pakistan. At the heart of the resurgence is a chronology of Pakistan's disastrous anti-terror policy and decisions.