Pakistan and the US War on Terror

The War on Terror was the name given by the United States to its global counter-terrorism campaign launched after the 11 September 2001 attacks. For twenty years — until the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 — this campaign defined Pakistan's relationship with Washington more than any other variable. The country became, in the language of US officials, a "major non-NATO ally" in 2004, while also bearing costs of the war estimated by Pakistani sources at over $150 billion and more than 80,000 lives.

The 9/11 trigger and Pakistan's choice

On the morning of 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda hijackers crashed civilian aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing 2,977 people. By 17 September, the Bush administration had identified Afghanistan's Taliban regime as harbouring al-Qaeda. Within 48 hours of the attacks, the United States contacted Pakistani Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf with what became known as the "seven demands".

The seven demands — never officially published in full but widely reported — included:

After internal deliberation among the corps commanders, Musharraf accepted all seven on 14 September. The decision realigned Pakistan's Afghan policy of the previous five years — the country had been one of only three states (with Saudi Arabia and the UAE) to recognise the Taliban regime — and put Pakistan on the side of the US-led intervention.

We considered every possible factor: our national interest, the welfare of the Muslim ummah, regional stability, the strength of our military, the state of our economy. I concluded that the only rational choice was to align with the United States — and that if we did not, the United States would align with India, a far worse outcome for us.

Operation Enduring Freedom (October 2001)

The US-led Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan was launched on 7 October 2001. Pakistan's contribution to the operation included:

• Air corridors: Pakistani airspace was opened for US military overflights, drastically reducing the operational range required of US aircraft.
• Bases: airbases at Pasni, Jacobabad, Dalbandin and Shamsi were made available to US forces.
• Logistics: the Karachi-Khyber and Karachi-Chaman ground routes carried over 70% of US-NATO supplies into Afghanistan until 2011.
• Border operations: the Pakistan Army deployed substantial forces along the Afghan frontier to intercept fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban elements.

By December 2001, the Taliban regime in Kabul had collapsed. Many of its leaders and a significant portion of al-Qaeda crossed into Pakistan, settling in the tribal agencies of Waziristan, Bajaur, Khyber and Mohmand. This influx — known to Pakistani security planners as the "second-stage" problem — became the principal internal-security challenge of the next two decades.

The drone programme

A distinctive feature of the War on Terror in Pakistan was the US drone strike programme, conducted primarily by the CIA from bases including Shamsi airbase in Balochistan (until 2011). The first strike on Pakistani soil — killing Nek Muhammad in South Waziristan — took place in June 2004. By the end of 2018, when the programme effectively wound down, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism had documented:

• Approximately 430 strikes in Pakistani tribal areas
• Estimated 2,500 to 4,000 deaths, including 400 to 900 civilians
• Geographic concentration in North and South Waziristan, with smaller clusters in Khyber, Bajaur and Kurram

The drone programme was politically polarising. The Pakistani government's public position throughout was that strikes violated sovereignty; the operational position — as revealed in leaked diplomatic cables and later memoirs — was a degree of selective tacit cooperation that varied by strike. The programme killed several high-value targets including TTP commanders Baitullah Mehsud (August 2009) and Hakimullah Mehsud (November 2013), and al-Qaeda figures Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ilyas Kashmiri.

Major Pakistani operations

In parallel with the US air war, Pakistan undertook a series of major ground operations in the tribal areas:

Operation	Year	Area	Outcome
Al-Mizan	2002–06	South Waziristan	Initial clearing operations
Rah-e-Haq I, II, III	2007–09	Swat valley	Restoration of state control in Swat
Rah-e-Nijat	2009	South Waziristan	Mehsud-area clearing
Khyber I–IV	2010–17	Khyber agency	Lashkar-e-Islam dismantling
Zarb-e-Azb	2014–16	North Waziristan	Largest single operation; major reduction in attacks
Radd-ul-Fasaad	2017–21	Nationwide	Urban-areas extension; intelligence-led

Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched on 15 June 2014 after the Karachi airport attack, displaced an estimated 1 million people from North Waziristan but is credited with the most significant reduction in domestic terror attacks of any single operation.

The 2011 Abbottabad raid

The single most controversial event of the US-Pakistan War on Terror partnership was the 2 May 2011 raid by US Navy SEALs on a compound in Abbottabad, killing Osama bin Laden. The raid was conducted without Pakistani knowledge or consent — a fact that produced immediate domestic political backlash and severely strained the bilateral relationship for years.

The subsequent Salala incident of November 2011, in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed by NATO airstrikes near the Afghan border, caused Pakistan to close the NATO supply route for seven months and to demand a formal US apology, which was eventually delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in July 2012.

The accumulated cost

Pakistani government and independent estimates of the cumulative cost of the War on Terror to Pakistan vary, but the most commonly cited figures (from the Ministry of Finance and the Center for Research and Security Studies) are:

• 80,000+ deaths of civilians and security personnel
• $150+ billion in direct and indirect economic losses
• 3.5 million internally displaced persons at peak (mostly from FATA operations)
• 35,000+ Pakistani security force casualties
• Damage to physical infrastructure worth billions in repair and reconstruction

The economic costs alone, on most measures, exceeded the cumulative inflow of US security and economic assistance to Pakistan over the same period — a fact that has loomed large in Pakistani public discourse about the bilateral relationship.

The next lesson examines the longer-term consequences of the War on Terror for Pakistan — political, economic, and strategic.