Pakistan Needs Support Fighting Terrorism. A Happy Trump Could Help.

As President Trump delivered a speech to Congress on Tuesday night for the first time since re-entering the White House, one country made a surprising cameo: Pakistan.

Mr. Trump thanked the Pakistani government for its role in capturing a regional Islamic State leader linked to an attack in 2021 at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 13 American service members and dozens of Afghan civilians.

The president’s announcement of the arrest signaled a possible strengthening of counterterrorism ties between Pakistan and the United States, just as the Pakistani government is seeking international support to combat a resurgence of terrorism within the country’s borders.

Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of about 250 million people, is navigating a complex web of internal and external pressures. Domestically, armed groups like the Pakistani Taliban in the north and ethnic separatists in the south have dramatically ramped up attacks. At the same time, the country is grappling with deepening economic instability and ongoing political turmoil after the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan in 2022.

Outside of Pakistan’s borders, the departure of the United States from Afghanistan in 2021 has altered regional dynamics. Pakistani leaders have increasingly been at odds with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where militant groups — some aligned with the Taliban and some opposed to them — have a growing foothold. And Pakistan’s expanding alliance with China has strained relations with the United States, which has reduced assistance to Pakistan since the end of the Afghan war.

Mr. Trump’s statement about the detention of what he called a “top terrorist” comes as Pakistan has experienced three suicide bombings in two volatile provinces over just four days.

One of those attacks, on an Islamic seminary in Pakistan long associated with the Afghan Taliban, was believed to have been carried out by the regional Islamic State affiliate, known as ISIS-K. That suggests the group’s wave of assaults targeting Taliban leaders in Afghanistan has now entered Pakistan with the killing of pro-Taliban figures.

Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, a think tank in Washington, said that “a thank-you from President Trump is no small win for Pakistan,” a country seeking recognition for its counterterrorism efforts in the region.

He emphasized, however, that Pakistan’s powerful military seeks more than gratitude. It wants a security partnership that actively targets its enemies, particularly Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistani leaders accuse the Taliban administration in Afghanistan of harboring the group and allowing it to conduct cross-border attacks, allegations that Taliban officials in Kabul deny.

Experts noted that the operation to capture the man linked to the Kabul airport attack in 2021 highlighted ongoing intelligence cooperation between the United States and Pakistan — at least against mutual threats like ISIS-K, a group that poses global security risks.

In a social media statement on Wednesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, thanked Mr. Trump for “acknowledging and appreciating” his country’s support in counterterrorism efforts across the region.

U.S. and Pakistani officials said that the United States had provided intelligence to Pakistan that led to the capture of Mohammad Sharifullah, an Afghan national who is a leader of ISIS-K.

Mr. Sharif said that Mr. Sharifullah had been arrested “in a successful operation conducted in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.” The prime minister did not say exactly where Mr. Sharifullah had been captured.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Taliban administration in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed that the arrest served as “proof” of ISIS-K hide-outs on Pakistani soil.

Iftikhar Firdous, editor of The Khorasan Diary, a research organization based in Islamabad that monitors militant groups, said Mr. Sharifullah had been involved in dozens of attacks in Afghanistan since joining ISIS-K in 2016.

He said that Mr. Sharifullah had previously been arrested by the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani administration in Kabul but was released when the Taliban freed about 1,700 hard-core militants after taking power in 2021.

A Justice Department news release implicated Mr. Sharifullah in the ISIS-K attack last year in suburban Moscow that killed more than 130 people. Mr. Sharifullah was flown to the United States on Wednesday and charged with violating terrorism statutes.

“The coordination between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s prime intelligence agency” in arresting Mr. Sharifullah, Mr. Firdous said, “marks yet another instance of a long history of cooperation that both the U.S. and Pakistan will depend on each other, even if it’s not boots on the ground.”

A global terrorism index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an international think tank, ranks Pakistan as the country second most affected by terrorism, after Burkina Faso.

Terrorist attacks in Pakistan are at their highest level since 2014. Deaths related to terrorism surged by 45 percent in 2024 over the year before, to 1,081, while attacks more than doubled, from 517 to 1,099.

On Tuesday evening, two suicide bombers associated with a local Pakistani Taliban commander drove vehicles packed with explosives into a military base in the Bannu district in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa before other attackers stormed the compound. At least 18 people were killed, including five soldiers, and dozens were wounded, according to the Pakistani military.

On Monday, a suicide bomber targeted a security forces convoy in Kalat, in the southwestern province of Balochistan, killing a paramilitary soldier and injuring four others.

On Friday, in the suspected ISIS-K suicide attack on the seminary, six worshipers in a mosque there were killed in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

While the U.S.-Pakistani collaboration in arresting the suspect in the Kabul airport attack raised hopes in Pakistan of further help in combating terrorist groups, it also had political repercussions.

Supporters of Mr. Khan, the prime minister who was ousted after falling out with the military, have hoped that the Trump administration will push for his release from prison. That expectation was heightened after close allies of Mr. Trump made statements supportive of Mr. Khan.

But those hopes may now be diminished after Mr. Trump’s praise of the Pakistani government, which has long been guided behind the scenes by the military, political analysts said.

Pakistan’s military chief “just won another round in his showdown with Imran Khan,” Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said on social media. The Pakistani Army, he added, “hasn’t lost its uncanny ability to ingratiate itself with whoever is in power in Washington.”