“Haunted by 2025, Pakistan enters 2026 in its own strategic illusions”, January 08, 2026
“In 2026, Pakistan enters a new year, but the shadow of 2025—the country’s deadliest year—still lingers. In the previous year, the debate inside Islamabad was no longer whether the country was facing a security crisis, but whether it still had the strategic bandwidth to manage more than one at a time.
The numbers, compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), tell the story with a bluntness that political statements cannot soften. Between January 1 and December 27, 2025, Pakistan recorded 1,070 incidents of killing, resulting in 3,967 deaths. Among them were 1,212 security personnel, 655 civilians, and 2,099 insurgents. In a single year, Pakistan nearly doubled the total fatalities it recorded in 2024.
This was not simply the deadliest year in recent memory. It was the year Pakistan’s internal security crisis stopped being containable and began to bleed visibly into its foreign policy, military posture, and diplomatic choices. Yet even these figures may significantly understate the true scale of loss……”
Read full article at firstpost.com
