What the Global Terrorism Index 2026 said
Pakistan has ranked number one on the Global Terrorism Index 2026, the annual ranking published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), for the first time, after recording 1,139 terrorism-related deaths and 1,045 incidents in 2025, Dawn reported on 23 March 2026. Deaths from terrorism in Pakistan are now at their highest level since 2013, the report said, with the country recording a six per cent year-on-year increase in fatalities and overtaking Burkina Faso for the top spot.
The IEP ranks 163 countries — covering 99.7pc of the world’s population — by the impact of terrorism, scoring them on the number of incidents, fatalities, injuries and hostages. The 2026 edition draws on data through the end of 2025.
What drove the ranking change
The report attributed the shift primarily to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which it identified as the deadliest terrorist group in Pakistan and the third deadliest globally. TTP attacks made up over 67pc of total attacks in Pakistan since 2009, and the group carried out five times as many attacks as the second-most-active group, the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). The TTP was also the only group among the four deadliest — Islamic State, Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen, TTP and al-Shabaab — to record an increase in orchestrated incidents in 2025.
Incidents attributed to the TTP rose 24pc, from 481 attacks in 2024 to 595 attacks in 2025, with all attacks occurring in Pakistan and concentrated primarily in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border. At least 637 deaths were attributed to the group in 2025 — the highest since 2011 and amounting to 56pc of terrorism-related deaths in the country. The largest single attack the TTP carried out in 2025 was an armed assault on Pakistani military forces that killed 21 people.
What the report said about regional spillover
The Afghan Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 has “profoundly impacted Pakistan’s security and stability,” the IEP said, by giving the TTP “the means and motivation to significantly expand their geographic reach and operational efficiency”. The report framed this as the sixth consecutive year in which Pakistan recorded a surge in terrorism-related deaths, even as the total number of attacks declined slightly in 2025.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan remained the most affected regions, accounting for more than 74pc of terrorist attacks and 67pc of deaths in Pakistan in 2025. Pakistan also recorded a sharp rise in hostages taken, from 101 in 2024 to 655 in 2025, driven primarily by the March 2025 Jaffar Express attack in which 442 people were seized; the IEP said that without that single incident, the country’s overall hostage count would have fallen by about 30pc year-on-year.
How Pakistan compares globally
Globally, the IEP found a substantial fall in terrorism, with deaths down 28pc to 5,582 in 2025. Islamic State and its affiliates remained the deadliest organisation, followed by JNIM, TTP and al-Shabaab; the four together accounted for 70pc of all terrorism fatalities worldwide. Under 70pc of deaths occurred in just five countries — Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — making Sub-Saharan Africa, alongside the Pakistan–Afghanistan corridor, the global epicentre in the report’s framing. Pakistan had ranked second in the 2025 edition; the jump to first place on Pakistan Day 2026 puts the country at the top of the global ranking for the first time since the index began.
Sources & reporting notes
This article is a synthesis of the IEP report and Dawn's reporting, not eyewitness reconstruction. Sources were reviewed on 23 March 2026.
- Institute for Economics and Peace — Global Terrorism Index 2026 report (PDF)Published 23 March 2026 · Primary research record on which the article's statistics are drawn: the 1,139 deaths, 1,045 incidents, the 24pc year-on-year rise in TTP attacks, the 67pc share of attacks attributed to the TTP since 2009, the KP/Balochistan concentration, the Jaffar Express hostage figure, and Pakistan's first-place ranking.
- Dawn — Pakistan now worst victim of terrorism23 March 2026 · Independent reporting on the report's release: confirms Pakistan's first-place ranking, the headline 1,139-deaths figure and the year-on-year increase, and contextualises the rise with the TTP, BLA and Afghan-border framing.
