by Misbah Saba Malik
ISLAMABAD, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- A 22-percent drop in the number of terror attacks was marked in Pakistan in 2017, compared to the year of 2016, according to the Global Terrorism Index report published by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace, due to collective efforts by the country's government and military.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani Army's media wing, said separately that a total of 483 terrorist incidents were averted last year, and that the country's intelligence agencies altogether issued 946 threat alerts, about 75 to 80 per month, about the possible terrorist attacks.
Mosques, shrines and other religious congregations remained the main target of suicide and planted explosions in 2017.
Pakistani security forces conducted 522 intelligence-based operations in which 475 people, including 452 militants and 22 security forces' personnel were killed and 88 others injured.
Some 1,760 suspected militants were arrested during the operations. Pakistani military courts, which formed after a terror attack on a school for speedy trials over terrorism related cases, also hanged 43 hard-core terrorists last year, according to the ISPR.
Some local experts believe that outlawed Islamic State (IS) is setting up its footprint in Afghanistan, and most of the terrorist attacks in the mosques and shrines in Pakistan were also claimed by them.
"The 'version' of the Islamic State practices contradicts with some of the Islamic practices in Pakistan, so they target mosques and shrines as to them praying in shrines and Shia mosques is sin," defence analyst Shahzad Chaudhry told Xinhua.
The military media wing also credited military operation Zarb-i-Azb, which was kicked off in mid-2014, for the improvement of law and order in the country. The operation mainly targeted safe havens of terrorists in the restive northwestern tribal region of North Waziristan and its adjoining areas to flush out local and foreign militants.
Tribal areas in northwestern part of the country, which once Pentagon called the most dangerous place on earth and the epicenter of the world's worst of global Jihadists, were cleared after the successful army operations, which bore fruit in the form of less terrorist attacks, according to the Pakistani Army.
In February 2017, the army also launched another operation "Radd-ul-Fassad" after a wave of terror attacks claimed over 100 lives in different parts of the country. The operation aims at eliminating the hidden terrorist sleeper cells from the country.
However, with all the efforts made by the Pakistan military, terrorists kept on carrying out small intensity and a few big attacks throughout the year of 2017. The United States also asked Pakistan to do more against terrorist networks inside the country to bring peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The ISPR, for its part, rejected the U.S. allegations that Pakistan didn't do a good job in anti-terrorism, reiterating that presently there is no organized infrastructure of terrorists in the country, and the terrorists from Afghanistan penetrate into Pakistan through the porous border between the two countries to launch attacks on Pakistani soil.
The army has started fencing at the border to avoid free movement of the Afghan militants into Pakistan.
Talking to Xinhua, defense analyst and retired Brigadier Muhammad Khan said that after Zarb-i-Azb, militants from tribal areas fled to Afghanistan, and carry out sporadic systematic attacks inside Pakistan by crossing the border.
He added that border fencing is a good strategy by the Pakistani army and up to 70 percent border infiltration is likely to be controlled upon the completion of the fencing next year.
Director General of the ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor recently said that Pakistan has controlled terrorist incidents to a great extent, though a few terrorist attacks are still happening in Pakistan.
Local watchers believe that though Pakistan continues to bear the brunt of the terrorist outfits, the tangible decrease in frequency and potential of the terrorist activities sparkles as the light at the end of the tunnel.
