More than 757 people have been killed and 733 injured in militant attacks across Pakistan during the first 9 months of 2024.
This corresponds to more than 640 militant attacks across the country, which have seen a significant increase, especially in the KP and Baluchistan provinces.
Tensions had been simmering in the region since the Kerman bombings of January, leading to a spiral of violence that engulfed the missile forces of Iran and Pakistan in an exchange of volleys targetting terror hideouts in each others' countries.
Violence flared up significantly, close on the heels of the Ismail Haniyeh killing inside Tehran on 31 July, for which there was widespread belief of retaliatory Iranian strikes on Israel.
The deadliest month for terror attacks proved to be August, which also saw the highest casualty count to terrorism in the country since 2017.
Iran had already conducted missile strikes on Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan. It had also been provoked into an unprecedented barrage of missile and drone strikes on Israel, following the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
As had been widely expected then, the Ismail Haniyeh assassination in Iran was expected to draw a response from Iran, which came belatedly in October following Syed Hassan Nasrallah's assassination in Lebanon.
Following Ismail Haniyeh's killing on July 31, August proved to be the deadliest month for Pakistan in the past 6 years, which saw at least 254 people, including 92 civilians and 54 security personnel killed in militant attacks and bombings.
92 civilians, 54 security personnel, and 108 militants were killed in August, while 150 individuals were injured, including 88 civilians, 35 security personnel, and 27 militants, as militants carried out 83 attacks across the country.
Southwestern Baluchistan witnessed the greatest uptick in violence, with at least 125 people killed including 80 civilians, 22 security personnel, and 23 militants.
Therefore, there appears to be a definite strategy to encircle both Iran and Pakistan, judging from the asymmetrical maneuvers that have taken place following major terrorist incidents.
Iran has been attacked along their Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq borders, while forces have been destabilizing it from within.
Also, Iranian interests have been hit hard in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, thereby hemming in the country while additional sanctions are slapped on it.
For Pakistan, similarly, KP and Baluchistan have flared up with hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings, as its Iranian and Afghan borders have grown more volatile.
Concurrently, Kashmir continues to simmer with sizeable troops amassed on either side of the border. In contrast, terrorist incidents in the valley threaten to embroil India and Pakistan into another confrontation along each other's borders.
Added to the mix is the focused targeting, by terrorist outfits, of Chinese personnel working on CPEC projects, aiming at throwing ongoing projects at risk and creating tensions between the two neighbors.
Therefore, the warfighting strategy is increasingly straightforward: an unstable Pakistan-Afghanistan border highlighted by terrorism on either side of the divide would engulf Iran and its second-largest city, Mashhad, which, in turn, is envisaged to propagate sectarian violence throughout the Islamic world.
Such a strategy focuses heavily on crippling the societies of Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as Iran. It is an extension of the US AfPak policy, which attempted to club the two countries as one organism exporting violent extremism and religious fanaticism.
At present (though the casualty count inside each of these countries is not as high as those witnessed in recent decades) Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan are gripped in a state of war, with policies aimed at directing a crippling of their economies and an implosion from within.
This spiral of "religious extremism" has suddenly taken a much more ominous turn with the armed forces of the three nations getting involved, marked by the exchange of rocket fire between Iran and Pakistan.
While the security situation continues to deteriorate, the economies of the three countries are perpetually tumbling, thanks to an ongoing regime of sanctions and a spiraling debt crisis.
Conflict in the region will prove to be disastrous and crippling, especially since violence, empirically, flares up with developments in the Middle East and in Occupied Palestine.
One may surmise that Israel has done its homework and crafted a warfighting strategy that insulates it from significant damage at home, while ensuring maximum gains beyond its borders, in partnership with its western allies.
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