Security Challenge
On April 17, 2026, Constable Khadim Ali Shah was killed and another Policeman, Constable Mohammed Tufail Khan, was injured when armed assailants attacked them in the Manghopir area of Orangi Town in Karachi. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack, reaffirming its continued ability to strike security personnel in Sindh’s provincial capital. On the same day, Security Forces arrested three TTP terrorists during a joint operation in Lyari, Karachi. A 30-bore pistol and 18 rounds were recovered from their possession. During initial interrogation, the arrested men reportedly disclosed plans for a major attack in the city.
These incidents came just a week after two other security-linked developments in Karachi. On April 10, a worshipper, Rehan, son of Ghulam Nabi, was shot dead outside Farooq-e-Azam Masjid in Sector 5C-1, within the limits of Khawaja Ajmer Nagri Police Station, shortly after Fajr prayers. Armed motorcyclists opened fire on him at the mosque entrance and fled. Also on April 10, the Counter-Terrorism Department, in a joint operation with a Federal Intelligence Agency, arrested Muhammad Farhan Khan near University Road. CTD described him as a target killer linked to the banned Shia outfit Zainabiyoun Brigade and recovered a 9mm pistol with a loaded magazine. According to CTD, the weapon had been used in a 2023 targeted killing, and the suspect had been involved in multiple sectarian and religious terrorist activities.
According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, Sindh recorded 10 terrorism-related fatalities in 2026 up to April 19, including eight terrorists, one civilian and one Security Force personnel. During the corresponding period of 2025, the province had recorded 12 fatalities, including seven SF personnel, five civilians and one terrorist. The lower figure for early 2026 may suggest a temporary decline, but the broader trend remains worrying. In the whole of 2025, Sindh recorded 49 terrorism-linked fatalities, including 26 civilians, 16 SF personnel and seven militants, compared to 38 fatalities in 2024, comprising 15 civilians, 14 SF personnel and nine militants. This represented a 28.94 per cent increase in overall fatalities.
The most troubling aspect of this rise was the sharp increase in civilian deaths. Civilian fatalities jumped from 15 in 2024 to 26 in 2025, an increase of 73.33 per cent. Security Force fatalities also rose slightly, from 14 in 2024 to 16 in 2025. Terrorist fatalities, however, declined from nine to seven, suggesting either reduced militant attrition or a shift in the pattern of attacks away from direct combat with security forces and toward softer targets.
Other indicators also deteriorated. Sindh recorded five major incidents in 2025, each involving at least three fatalities, compared to four such incidents in 2024. Fatalities in major incidents increased from 13 to 19. The most prominent major attack of 2025 occurred on August 26, when TTP terrorists opened fire near Faqira Goth on the Site Super Highway in Karachi, killing four people and injuring one. TTP later claimed responsibility. Explosions also increased, with 14 such incidents in 2025 resulting in 14 fatalities, compared to nine incidents in 2024 that caused 10 fatalities.
Karachi remained the epicentre of terrorism in the province. Of the 49 fatalities recorded in Sindh in 2025, Karachi alone accounted for 31. The remaining 18 were distributed across Kashmore, Ghotki, Naushahro Feroze, Larkana and Badin. In 2024 as well, Karachi accounted for 27 of the province’s 38 terrorism-related fatalities. The concentration of violence in Karachi is unsurprising. The city’s dense population, complex ethnic composition, port economy, criminal networks, sectarian histories and political rivalries make it a persistent target for militant and criminal actors alike.
The threat landscape in Sindh is not limited to Islamist militancy. In addition to TTP and sectarian groups, Baloch separatist formations and Sindhi nationalist militant groups have remained active. The Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army and Sindhudesh Liberation Army have repeatedly framed their violence around opposition to what they describe as Punjabi domination, resource exploitation and the occupation of Sindh’s land and water.
A significant development came in March 2025, when media reports indicated that the SRA had joined the Baloch Raji Aajoi Sangar, an alliance of pro-independence Baloch insurgent groups that includes formations such as the Balochistan Liberation Army, Balochistan Liberation Front and Baloch Republican Guards. The SRA’s entry into this alliance appeared to signal a growing operational and ideological convergence between Sindhi and Baloch separatist actors.
The effects of this alignment became visible almost immediately. On March 4, 2025, just two days after the reported BRAS meeting, SRA cadres ambushed National Logistics Cell vehicles on the Sujawal-Mirpur Bathoro Road in Sujawal District, injuring two drivers. The SRA claimed responsibility and accused the Pakistani state of occupying Sindh and exploiting its resources. The attack’s method resembled patterns often associated with Baloch insurgent operations, suggesting possible tactical borrowing or coordination.
Earlier, on February 15, 2025, SRA cadres attacked NLC tankers near Mirpur Mathelo in Ghotki District. The group described the attack as a response to the alleged exploitation of Sindh’s resources, including diversion of Indus waters and land acquisition under the Green Pakistan Initiative. On April 22, 2025, the SRA attacked a passenger train bound for Punjab near Guddu Chowk in Hyderabad District, claiming it had targeted Punjabi settlers and framing the attack as resistance to the “colonial exploitation” of Sindh. On June 4, 2025, SRA cadres launched a hand grenade attack on Naseem Nagar Police Station in Hyderabad city, accusing the Sindh Police of suppressing nationalist protest movements.
These attacks reveal the ideological narrative driving Sindhi separatist violence: control over land, water, resources and identity. They also demonstrate the risk that localised ethno-nationalist grievances may become more lethal when they intersect with better-organised insurgent networks operating in neighbouring Balochistan.
However, while terrorism and separatist militancy remain serious concerns, Karachi’s most pervasive security crisis is street crime. The scale of everyday criminality continues to erode public confidence and impose severe costs on residents. During the first three months of 2026, Karachi recorded more than 14,000 street crime incidents. According to Citizens-Police Liaison Committee data released on April 9, the period saw thousands of motorcycle thefts and snatchings, mobile phone snatchings and car thefts. Nearly 134 people were killed while resisting robberies in just the first quarter.
The monthly figures are stark. In January 2026, 3,509 motorcycles were stolen or snatched, 1,441 mobile phones were snatched, 156 cars were stolen or snatched, and 50 people were killed during robberies. In February, 3,178 motorcycles, 1,237 mobile phones and 165 cars were stolen or snatched, while 40 people were killed. In March, 3,467 motorcycles, 1,265 mobile phones and 157 cars were stolen or snatched, with 44 robbery-related fatalities.
The police argue that the situation has improved relative to 2025. During the corresponding three months of 2025, Karachi had recorded 16,977 street crime incidents, including 4,298 mobile phones, 11,982 motorcycles and 537 cars stolen or robbed. Inspector General of Sindh Police Javed Alam Odho stated on April 11, 2026, that crime across Sindh, including Karachi, had decreased significantly, claiming that street crime in Karachi had declined by 18 per cent over the previous three months and that highway and interior Sindh crime were also falling.
There is some statistical basis for this claim. Sindh Police data showed that Karachi recorded 64,323 street crime incidents in 2025, down from 71,105 in 2024. Fatalities linked to street crime also reportedly declined from 99 deaths and 400 injuries in 2024 to 70 deaths and 290 injuries up to the first week of December 2025. Mobile phone snatching cases fell from 19,353 in 2024 to 17,706 in 2025, while vehicle hijacking and theft also showed reductions.
Yet the improvement is relative, not reassuring. More than 64,000 street crimes in a single year remain an extraordinary burden for any city. Moreover, the official figures are based on registered FIRs, and underreporting is widely believed to be substantial. Many victims do not approach police stations, either because they lack faith in the system, fear harassment, or believe recovery is unlikely.
Criminologist Zoha Waseem of the University of Warwick has rightly cautioned against drawing conclusions from short-term comparisons. As she observed, two years of data are insufficient to assess whether crime is genuinely being prevented or whether the state is merely shaping a perception of improvement. A reliable assessment would require five to 10 years of consistent data, along with independent studies on public perception and trust in law enforcement. In the absence of such research, official claims of success remain difficult to verify.
This gap between police statistics and public experience is central to Karachi’s security crisis. Even when reported crime declines, fear may remain high if residents continue to face armed robbery, mobile snatching and fatal violence in daily life. In a city where ordinary commutes, mosque visits, market trips and work routines can expose citizens to armed criminals, public confidence cannot be restored through numerical reductions alone.
Sindh therefore faces a dual challenge. On one level, it must continue counter-terrorism operations against TTP, sectarian militants and separatist formations. This requires intelligence-led policing, inter-agency coordination, monitoring of militant financing, and sustained pressure on urban safe houses and logistical networks. On another level, the province must confront the everyday criminality that affects citizens more frequently than terrorism. Street crime, extortion, kidnapping, vehicle theft and robbery are not merely law-and-order problems; they create the environment in which militant and criminal networks can recruit, hide, finance themselves and intimidate communities.
Karachi’s insecurity cannot be separated from governance failure. Weak prosecution, poor investigation, political interference, corruption, underreporting, inadequate urban surveillance, and lack of public trust all contribute to a permissive environment for crime. In interior Sindh, grievances over land, water, policing and resource distribution create additional vulnerabilities that separatist groups can exploit.
The state’s response must therefore be comprehensive. Counter-terrorism raids alone will not stabilise Sindh. Nor will statistical claims of declining crime satisfy citizens who continue to experience violence on the streets. What is required is a combination of sustained intelligence operations, depoliticised policing, stronger prosecution, better crime data, community engagement, urban planning, and targeted action against both militant and criminal economies.
Sindh’s terrorism problem may be contained compared to Pakistan’s more volatile regions, but it is far from resolved. Karachi remains the province’s central security fault line, while separatist violence in interior districts shows signs of evolving through coordination with Baloch insurgent groups. At the same time, ordinary crime continues to inflict a daily toll that undermines public faith in the state.
The April 2026 incidents are therefore not isolated. They are reminders that Sindh’s security challenge is multidimensional: terrorism, separatism, sectarian militancy and organised street crime overlap in a province where the state’s coercive capacity is visible but its preventive capacity remains weak. Unless law enforcement moves beyond episodic operations and addresses the deeper ecosystem of violence, Sindh will continue to experience cycles of containment without genuine security.
