Terrorist attacks recorded in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa increased from 111 in 2021 to 413 in 2025, a rise of 272.1 percent, according to a new policy review based on annual data from the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).
The review says the 2025 figure was 3.72 times the number recorded in 2021, with the number of attacks increasing in every year of the five-year series.
The annual data show 111 attacks in 2021, 169 in 2022, 174 in 2023, 295 in 2024 and 413 in 2025.
The same attacks were associated with 169 deaths and 122 injuries in 2021. By 2025, the corresponding figures had risen to 581 deaths and 698 injuries.
The report cautions that these figures should not be interpreted as the total death toll of the conflict or as civilian or police deaths alone. PIPS records include civilians, security personnel and militants killed during attacks or immediate retaliatory fire.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also accounted for more than half of the terrorist attacks recorded across Pakistan in each year of the series.
Its share stood at 53.6 percent in 2021, rising to 64.5 percent in 2022 before settling at 56.9 percent in 2023, 56.6 percent in 2024 and 59.1 percent in 2025.
The burden was particularly concentrated in southern districts.
According to the review, PIPS recorded 248 attacks in six southern districts in 2025, namely North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Bannu, Tank, Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan.
Together, those districts accounted for about 60 percent of all terrorist attacks recorded in the province that year, although terrorist activity was recorded in 27 districts.
The report says the figures demonstrate both a concentrated security core in southern KP and a wider geographic spread across the province.
The review deliberately does not compare a partial 2026 figure with the full 2025 calendar year, saying that doing so would create a misleading comparison.
Instead, it places the five-year trend against the political and security policy record, examining negotiations, concessions, policing and developments in Afghanistan without claiming that the attack figures alone establish the impact of any single policy.
