Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office announced a “reinvigorated” national counterterrorism strategy last Saturday, promising a combination of “kinetic efforts,” new legislation to bolster terrorism prosecutions, and steps to counter violent extremism.
On Tuesday, Sharif clarified that the strategy, which Islamabad emphasizes is not yet finalized, will focus more on intensifying existing intelligence-based operations than on launching new military offensives. Still, the shift marks one of the biggest steps yet to tackle an increasing terrorist threat in Pakistan, where attacks increased by two-thirds between 2022 and 2023.
Pakistan has held talks with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or the Pakistani Taliban, which presents the country’s main threat; pressured the Afghan Taliban to curb anti-Pakistan militant activity in Afghanistan; and staged cross-border strikes in Afghanistan. None of these policies has solved the problem.
Some analysts rightly attribute the timing of the decision to the political moment. After a long period of internal turmoil, some political and economic stability has returned to Pakistan, giving the powerful military the space to pursue this strategy, which could help it regain public support after recent hits to its public image.
However, there is also good reason to believe that China was a motivating factor driving the new plan—and that it might even play a role in the strategy once it is implemented.
China is Pakistan’s closest ally, and yet it faces serious terrorism risks in Pakistan today. The most active militant groups in Pakistan—the TTP, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)—have all targeted Chinese nationals or interests. Many Chinese investment projects are in western Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan, which is especially vulnerable to terrorism.
A string of attacks targeting Chinese interests in Pakistan in recent years has led Beijing to repeatedly call on Islamabad to provide better security. Tellingly, Pakistan announced its new counterterrorism plan soon after Sharif returned from a five-day visit to China.
The TTP is based in Afghanistan and closely allied with the Afghan Taliban, which have resisted Pakistani pressure to rein in the group. This is where there may be a potential role for Beijing. China has considerable leverage over the Taliban: a large amount of capital that it could deploy toward investments in Afghanistan if its terrorism concerns there are addressed. (Militants have struck Chinese targets in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan.)
Pakistan’s own leverage in Afghanistan has diminished since the Taliban takeover, as the group no longer requires Pakistani sanctuary. Islamabad may hope that Beijing will press the Taliban to take steps that reduce the TTP threat in Pakistan. This would additionally serve Chinese interests by reducing risks in Afghanistan: If cross-border terrorism decreases, Pakistan has less incentive to stage strikes in Afghanistan, where China is exploring investment possibilities.
One shouldn’t rule out the United States here: Increasing anxieties about the growing capacity of IS-K, which is also based in Afghanistan, to project a global threat have sharpened shared U.S.-Pakistan concerns about the group. The countries recently held a bilateral counterterrorism dialogue. But there are limits to their counterterrorism cooperation; most U.S. security aid to Pakistan has been suspended since 2018, and their primary concerns now differ.
Moreover, the Biden administration has largely moved on from Afghanistan nearly three years after its military withdrawal. The United States appears satisfied with the Taliban’s own operations against IS-K, which unlike the TTP is a Taliban rival. By contrast, China has an outsized investment presence in Pakistan and is exploring deeper engagements in Afghanistan.
At the end of the day, China now has more skin in the game in the region than the United States does, which may make Beijing a more viable counterterrorism partner for Islamabad going forward.