Pakistan lost 7,000 to terror in 2015: study

Conflicts on both sides of Durand Line are interlinked

Around 7,000 people have been killed in Pakistan in the war on terror since 2015 though violence on both sides of the Durand Line continues to pick up in the current year, a study said.

The war has also claimed the lives of around 62,000 people and injured 67,000 others in Pakistan since 2001.



This was stated in a study on the human costs of the conflict in Pakistan and Afghanistan released earlier this week by ‘Costs of War’ a project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

According to the report, which was based on data collected by various organisations and figures released by respective governments,  173,000 people have been killed and 183,000 others have been injured in the war in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001. Since May 2015 alone, around 24,000 people have been killed in the two countries.



Most of these casualties, however, are militants.

In Pakistan, there has been a fall in violence in recent years with the number of suicide attacks in 2015 the lowest they have been at any time since 2006, while civilian deaths were the lowest since 2007.

It said that in Pakistan since 2001, 22,100 civilians and 8,214 security officials have been killed.



However, it identified an upward trend in of violence in Pakistan in the first half of 2016.

“If the pattern established in the first six months of 2016 holds, there will be a rise in the number of people killed and injured in suicide attacks in 2016 as compared to 2014 and 2015,” wrote Neta Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University and the author of the study.

While noting that the war-related violence in Afghanistan was far worse than in Pakistan, the two wars were interlinked. Hence, increased intensity of the fighting in Afghanistan could have a “spill over” effect in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 15^th, 2016.