An excerpt from a speech Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif delivered at the United Nations last year is circulating widely again, just ahead of his upcoming address before the General Assembly. In the clip, Sharif can be heard telling the 80th UN General Assembly on September 2026, 2025, “Had these terrorists not been encountered by us, they would have been roaming on the streets of New York and London and God knows, Far East.”
In last year’s address, Sharif opened by stating that Pakistan condemned terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations,” positioning the country as having stood at the forefront of the global counterterrorism effort for more than two decades. He cited a toll of over 90,000 deaths and $150 billion in economic losses suffered by Pakistan in that fight.
Building on this, Sharif argued that terrorism respected no national boundaries, drawing parallels between a life lost in New York and one lost in Lahore, and insisting that the threat needed to be confronted on a global scale. It was directly after making this argument that he delivered the line about terrorists potentially roaming the streets of New York and London had Pakistan not intervened. He went on to describe Pakistan as a “bulwark” against terrorism, framing the country’s counterterrorism record as a service extended to people well beyond its own borders.
