Pakistan’s soldiers are dying as its army fights the wrong battles

-Arun Anand

On the intervening night of October 7-8, Pakistan Army suffered one of its deadliest blows in recent months when eleven of its soldiers, including two senior officers, were killed in an anti-militancy operation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Orakzai district. According to a statement from Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Lt. Col. Junaid Tariq, 39, and his second-in-command, Major Tayyab Rahat, 33, were killed during an intelligence-based operation (IBO) against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants.

Now, barely 24 hours later, in another statement, ISPR revealed that another young officer, 30-year-old Major Sibtain Haider, was killed in another firefight in Dera Ismail Khan. The loss of these many soldiers in mere two days highlights the resurgence of militancy across Pakistan’s restive northwest and Balochistan. It reveals an uncomfortable truth that while its soldiers bleed on the frontlines, Pakistan’s powerful military leadership remains increasingly busy in managing internal politics, governance and diplomacy instead of its delegated responsibility of national security.

These recent deaths add to a steadily rising tally of military casualties in Pakistan’s long and exhausting counterinsurgency wars. What began two decades ago as an ambitious campaign to “cleanse” the tribal belt of militants has evolved into a grinding cycle of violence that Pakistan has never truly escaped. Since launching “Operation Azm-i-Istehkam” in June last year, which was supposed to be comprehensive campaign to reassert state authority in militancy-infested regions in the country’s hinterland, the military has claimed frequent “successes” in neutralizing insurgents. However, the numbers tell another story.

According to a recently released report by the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), Pakistan witnessed 212 militant attacks in August and September alone, which resulted in 135 deaths beside injuries to nearly two hundred. More significantly, among the dead were 61 security personnel, which is nearly triple the number of militants killed during anti-insurgency operations. The ratio exposes a deeply troubling imbalance that far from being on the defensive, militant outfits like the TTP and Islamic State’s Khorasan affiliate (IS-K) have grown more emboldened and well-equipped.

Parallel data from the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) reinforces the bleak picture. “In just three quarters,” CRSS noted, “2025 has proven nearly as deadly as all of 2024, with 2,414 fatalities recorded compared to 2,546 for the entire year before. With a quarter still remaining, 2025 is on course to surpass last year’s toll.” If the trajectory holds, this could be Pakistan’s bloodiest year in a decade.

The figures are symptomatic of a deeper institutional malaise. Pakistan’s Army, which is inarguably the most powerful institution in the country and has for decades served its de facto decision-maker, is increasingly distracted due to its non-military functions. Under Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, who took command in November 2022, the military’s attention has been directed more toward managing Pakistan’s politics and external relations than securing its own soil.

Instead of focusing on the country’s hinterland in KPK and Balochistan where militants and insurgents have reasserted their presence, the top brass in Rawalpindi has been preoccupied with stabilizing a floundering civilian government, brokering deals with foreign creditors, and navigating Islamabad’s fragile ties with Washington, Beijing, and Riyadh. Asim Munir himself has appeared as much a statesman as a soldier by not only negotiating financial lifelines, leading diplomatic engagements, and, in many ways, functioning as Pakistan’s parallel prime minister.

But this expanding political role has come at a cost. While the Army’s leadership remains entangled in governance and foreign policy, its counterterrorism machinery has been stretched thin as well as demoralized.

Such military causalities will only add to the worsening morale of soldiers.

While the militant violence has resurged across Pakistan’s peripheries, with TTP re-establishing its shadow administrations in parts if KPK and a new generation of Baloch insurgents targeting military convoys, economic projects, and Chinese infrastructure linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the state’s response has been both predictable and ineffective. Rawalpindi and Islamabad has responded with more military operations, more checkpoints, more rhetoric about “national resolve.”

For those living under the shadow of this militarised system in KPK and Balochistan, Pakistan Army’s presence has always been “less like protection” and more like suppression and occupation. Despite such a reality, the country’s security establishment has never shown any willingness to confront the political roots of this instability. They continue to overlook how the decades of militarized governance have alienated communities and deepened distrust between the centre and the periphery.

While soldiers die on the frontlines, the Army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi remains entrenched in civilian affairs. Field Marshal Munir has been instrumental in shaping Pakistan’s political transition after the fall of Imran Khan’s government, ensuring a pliant civilian administration led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The Army’s imprint, which was shadowy earlier, over the judiciary, media, and bureaucracy has grown heavier than ever.

In economic policy, too, the military’s footprint is unmistakable. Army Chief has been instrumental in establishing the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), which aimed at attracting foreign investments into the country. Even foreign policy has become a military domain with Asim Munir regularly visiting abroad to countries like United States and China besides Gulf countries. He is not only eclipsing the role of a foreign minister but is growingly demonstrating himself to the world as the most important power centre of the country. This over-centralization of power has weakened civilian institutions, stifled accountability, and blurred the line between national defense and political engineering.

Pakistan’s security doctrine has, for a long time, demonstrated external fixation on India and Afghanistan, whom it has blamed for its recurrent security failures. However, today Pakistan’s most serious threats lie within. The persistence of homegrown militancy in KPK, ethno-nationalist insurgency of Balochistan, and sectarian violence across the country indicates a failure of security doctrine.

Though it conceived Operation Azm-i-Istehkam, like many of its predecessors, as a show of force, its failure to contain militancy demonstrates the reluctance of the Army to deal with its own policy contradictions. For decades, Rawalpindi tolerated “good” and “bad” militants, a legacy of decades of sponsorship of various proxies given its regional ambitions. Now its attempts to fight them without addressing the ideological and institutional complicity that sustained them is akin to treating symptoms while ignoring the disease.

The growing toll of military casualties are a reminder of this cost, symbolizing the futility of a security policy mired in political distraction. For years, Pakistan’s generals have justified their political dominance as a bulwark against instability. Yet the rising body count suggests the opposite as the more the Army entrenches itself in the levers of governance, the less secure the country becomes.

As the violence escalates, will military continue to be both the ruler and the defender remains to be seen. But the fact remains that the sprawling, unaccountable, and politically entangled empire of the generals has hollowed out the very institution it claims to protect. It is the Pakistani soldiers who are paying the price for a leadership that has lost its sense of responsibility.

Weigh prudence over bravado: Why US–Pakistan campaign of retaking Bagram could trigger wider war

-Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

The United States looks poised to return to the very theatre it once abandoned: Bagram. What Washington calls a tactical correction could quickly become a strategic rupture for South Asia. A renewed US push – now reportedly coordinated with Pakistan’s security establishment – to retake Bagram Air Base and re-establish a foothold in Afghanistan risks detonating a broader regional conflagration, reigniting refugee flows, empowering jihadist networks and drawing Pakistan deeper into an unwinnable security quagmire. The question is not whether the dust will settle – it is how many countries, communities and lives will be buried beneath it.

US President Donald Trump – in what he frames as a move to correct the “perceived mistakes” of the previous administration – has signalled renewed US interest in re-establishing a presence at Afghanistan’s strategic Bagram Air Base. Washington’s overtures have already put Islamabad on notice to expedite preparations for possible operations that could include seizing Bagram and pushing to unseat or reshape the current Taliban-led regime. Reports indicate that, if such a military offensive goes forward, US–Pakistani forces could also strike selected targets inside Afghanistan and press against militant networks that threaten Pakistan, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The Afghan Taliban reportedly reacted to these developments by ordering their Defence Ministry and the so-called Tath’heri (Purification) Commission to erase biometric records of Taliban officials and fighters – a move described in reporting based on Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) sources. The directive, according to those reports, reflects deep concern among Taliban leaders that renewed US pressure or the collapse of talks in places such as Bagram could trigger unilateral strikes or renewed efforts to dismantle their command structures.

Purging biometric data is both practical and symbolic. Practically, the obliteration of fingerprints, iris scans and other personal identifiers would complicate outside efforts to track commanders and rank-and-file fighters; it would make it easier for militants to slip across borders, adopt new identities, or seek refuge in other networks. Symbolically, the purge signals a loss of confidence in negotiations and a preparation for the worst-case scenario: a new round of kinetic pressure that could again turn Afghanistan into a launching pad for transnational militancy. Human-rights and humanitarian organisations have long warned about the risks posed by biometric systems in Afghanistan — both when those systems fall into insurgent hands and when their erasure removes accountability and traceability for vulnerable civilians.

Intelligence reporting suggests militants are preparing multiple fallback options: some operatives may attempt to embed with groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP); others may cross into Pakistan’s tribal districts and border provinces. These movements, if they occur en masse, would re-create the destabilising dynamics Islamabad confronted after 2001 – namely, the spillover of fighters, weapons and illicit finance into Pakistan’s frontier regions, with huge costs in lives, displacement and security.

There are already signs of high-stakes diplomacy and renewed security contact between Washington and Islamabad. Recent high-level interactions between US and Pakistani military and political leaders suggest a rapid re-engagement that some analysts read as a strategic gamble by Pakistan’s military establishment to regain influence and secure economic or security concessions from Washington. Whether Islamabad will accept a subordinate role in a US-led operation in Afghanistan, however, is far from certain; domestic politics, sectarian fissures, and a host of ongoing internal insurgencies complicate any Pakistani commitment.

Pakistan’s domestic situation makes any external adventure riskier. The Pakistani Army is already struggling to continue military operations in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; at the same time, serious political unrest in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and rising opposition activity inside the country would make the reallocation of troops and resources to a new Afghan campaign politically costly and operationally difficult. Moreover, the persistent threat from TTP and other domestic militant groups means Islamabad cannot simply redeploy its security apparatus without leaving critical vulnerabilities at home. In short, the calculus that once made Pakistan a willing partner for extraterritorial operations has changed. The Pakistani state of the 2000s is not the Pakistani state of today.

If Washington and Islamabad proceed with joint offensives to retake Bagram and press into Afghanistan, the immediate human cost will be severe. Large-scale operations — air strikes, special-forces raids and cross-border pursuit — will almost certainly result in significant civilian casualties, internal displacement, and the fracturing of fragile local governance structures. The re-introduction of sustained foreign military activity would also invite responses from regional powers. Iranian and Russian policymakers have repeatedly warned that aggressive US moves in Afghanistan could escalate into broader confrontations, while China has signaled unease about renewed American military footprints in Central and South Asia.

A renewed campaign could also spur a scramble over Afghanistan’s illicit economies, particularly the opium trade. Historically, control over narcotics routes and processing has financed militias and threatened to entangle security services in corrupt economies. If Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and other actors become further implicated in attempts to control smuggling routes or extract rents from the trade, that will accelerate domestic corruption and erode the legitimacy of state institutions.

Finally, the political fallout inside Pakistan could be profound. Opposition parties and civil society could mobilise against what they characterize as another dangerous foreign entanglement, while disenfranchised groups in restive provinces might exploit the distraction to intensify insurgencies. The combination of military overstretch, economic strain, and a renewed influx of fighters into the tribal belt would make Pakistan considerably less stable — and therefore less capable of managing the very threats a joint operation claims to resolve.

In short, the prospect of a US–Pakistan operation to retake Bagram is not simply a tactical matter of bases and battalions. It is a decision with wide-ranging geopolitical, humanitarian and domestic consequences: for Afghan civilians, for Pakistan’s fragile polity, and for the broader regional balance.

Reoccupying Bagram would be a Pyrrhic victory. Even if US and Pakistani forces briefly seize terrain, the deeper strategic problems that have long plagued Afghanistan – fractured governance, opportunistic militancy, narcotics economies, and the absence of a legitimate, inclusive political settlement – will remain. Worse, a military-first solution risks exporting instability into Pakistan and across the region.

If there is to be any hope of stabilising Afghanistan, it must rest on clear political objectives, robust humanitarian safeguards, and a regional framework that includes not only the United States and Pakistan but also Afghanistan’s neighbours.

Policymakers in Washington and Islamabad should weigh prudence over bravado: the lives lost, institutions shattered and refugee crises unleashed by another foreign intervention cannot be undone by a single airstrike or parade of proclamations.

The monster Pakistan made is now devouring South Asia

– Arun Anand

There is a dark irony unfolding in South Asia: Pakistan, long accused of nurturing militant groups as tools of regional influence, is now locked in open conflict with Afghanistan over the very monsters it helped create. The war Islamabad now wages on Afghan soil, under the pretext of destroying the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), is in many ways a war against its own reflection. For decades, Pakistan cultivated militant networks for strategic depth, funded radical religious infrastructure, and tolerated extremist ideologies under its nose. Now, those networks have turned inward, destabilizing its own borders and forcing it into the position of aggressor, violating Afghanistan’s territorial integrity and further endangering a region already trembling under the weight of instability. The roots of this crisis reach back to the 1980s, when Pakistan became the staging ground for the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. With U.S. and Saudi funding, the Pakistani military and its intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), trained tens of thousands of fighters, funneled weapons through the tribal areas, and radicalized a generation in the name of religion and nationalism. This vast militant infrastructure did not disappear after the Soviet withdrawal—it metastasized. By the 1990s, Pakistan supported the rise of the Afghan Taliban, viewing them as a proxy to ensure a friendly regime in Kabul and to deny India any foothold. That same policy of weaponizing extremism spilled back into Pakistan’s own territory, where groups that once served Islamabad’s ambitions turned rogue, seeking to impose their own version of Islam by force.

The TTP emerged in 2007 as a coalition of various Pakistani militant factions. Its founding leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was a product of the tribal belt in Waziristan, trained in the same jihadist ecosystem Pakistan had helped sustain for decades. Initially tolerated as a buffer against local insurgencies, the TTP began to challenge the Pakistani state directly, attacking military convoys, police installations, and schools. From 2007 to 2024, TTP attacks have killed more than 85,000 Pakistanis, including civilians and soldiers, according to Pakistan’s own counterterrorism statistics. Yet the irony is inescapable: the group’s ideology, recruitment networks, and funding channels are all descendants of the very militant infrastructure that Pakistan’s military establishment built, nurtured, and exploited.

In recent years, Islamabad has sought to portray itself as the victim of cross-border terrorism, arguing that the TTP now operates from sanctuaries in Afghanistan. There is truth in the claim that many TTP fighters fled across the Durand Line after Pakistan’s military offensives in 2014 and 2017. But the more fundamental truth is that these sanctuaries exist only because Pakistan drove them there after years of manipulation and failed peace deals. Now, when the TTP stages attacks on Pakistani soil, Islamabad responds with airstrikes and artillery fire across the border, violating Afghan sovereignty and causing civilian casualties. In March 2025 alone, more than 40 civilians were reported killed in air raids in Khost and Paktika provinces. In September, Pakistani strikes near Nangarhar and Kunar killed at least 60 people, including women and children, according to Afghan local authorities. The toll is rising monthly, and the conflict risks spiraling into a wider confrontation between two nuclear-armed neighbors. The cost to human life is staggering. Since August 2021, when the Taliban regained power in Kabul, more than 1,200 people have died in Pakistan-Afghanistan border clashes, including 380 civilians.

Over 600,000 Afghans have been displaced from eastern provinces due to Pakistani bombardment, while thousands of Pakistani civilians living in frontier districts have fled their homes because of TTP incursions. Trade routes between Torkham and Spin Boldak have been repeatedly closed, crippling the livelihoods of thousands of traders. The border, once porous but functional, has turned into a militarized zone of suspicion and fear. Afghan officials accuse Pakistan of acting like an occupying power, while Islamabad justifies its actions as “preventive counterterrorism.” But there is nothing preventive about indiscriminate bombing. Every missile that lands on Afghan soil deepens the resentment of ordinary Afghans and fuels the anti-Pakistan sentiment that militants thrive upon. At the core of this escalation is Pakistan’s refusal to confront its own culpability. The TTP was not born in a vacuum; it was engineered by decades of policy that saw militant groups as assets. Pakistan’s military establishment has long differentiated between the “good Taliban,” who operate in Afghanistan and serve Islamabad’s regional interests, and the “bad Taliban,” who attack within Pakistan. This cynical dichotomy has collapsed.

Fighters once trained for operations in Afghanistan have turned their guns inward, angry at Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States and its repression of Islamist networks. The same madrassas that produced Taliban ideologues in the 1990s continue to churn out young men steeped in extremist ideology. The result is a conveyor belt of radicalization that Pakistan itself struggles to turn off. Economically, the blowback has been disastrous. The war on terror, combined with Pakistan’s internal insurgency, has cost the country over $150 billion in lost GDP since 2001. Foreign investment has fled. Security spending consumes nearly 20% of Pakistan’s federal budget, leaving little for education, health, or infrastructure. Inflation has soared, unemployment is at record levels, and public trust in the military—the country’s most powerful institution—is crumbling. For ordinary Pakistanis, the state’s obsession with controlling Afghanistan through militant proxies has produced nothing but perpetual insecurity and poverty. The narrative that Pakistan is itself a victim of terrorism rings hollow when one remembers that it was Pakistan’s own state machinery that created, sheltered, and armed the very groups now tearing it apart.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, suffers the consequences of Pakistan’s militarism. Its fragile economy, already devastated by sanctions and international isolation, is further strangled by border closures and bombings. Afghan villages in Khost, Paktia, and Kandahar have been hit multiple times by Pakistani airstrikes that claim to target TTP hideouts but often strike homes and mosques. The death toll in Afghanistan since Pakistan began its cross-border operations in 2022 has surpassed 2,000, including hundreds of women and children. Each attack drives a deeper wedge between the two nations and pushes Afghanistan closer to resentment, revenge, and radicalization. In the absence of legitimate international mediation, these tit-for-tat escalations could ignite a full-blown war, one that would destabilize the entire region. The implications for South Asia’s peace are dire. With India and Pakistan already locked in a frozen hostility, any further militarization of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border threatens to open another front in the regional security crisis. The influx of refugees, cross-border militant flows, and smuggling networks will exacerbate tensions across Central Asia. China, which has invested billions in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, faces growing insecurity in its western projects. Iran, too, fears the spillover of militancy into its eastern provinces. South Asia’s peace, already hanging by a thread, could unravel completely if Pakistan continues to externalize the consequences of its own policies.

The argument that Pakistan is the epicenter of global militancy is not mere rhetoric—it is borne out by data. Of the world’s twenty most active terrorist groups identified by international monitoring agencies in 2024, at least six originated or operate primarily from Pakistani soil. Pakistan remains the only country where three distinct Taliban movements—Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and various splinters—coexist, often with overlapping logistics and ideological networks. From Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to the Haqqani Network and TTP, these groups share the same genealogical tree: nurtured by Pakistan’s security apparatus under the illusion of strategic control. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle of violence that has not only consumed Pakistan but also undermined peace from Kabul to Kashmir.

Pakistan’s strategy of plausible deniability—funding, training, or tolerating militants and then denying responsibility—has reached its end. The international community increasingly sees Pakistan not as a victim of terrorism but as a hub of it. Its actions in Afghanistan—airstrikes, cross-border raids, violations of sovereignty—expose its desperation to contain a monster that no longer obeys. The TTP’s resurgence is the final proof that Pakistan’s policy of using terrorism as an instrument of statecraft has imploded. The creator has lost control of its creation.

The tragedy is that ordinary Pakistanis and Afghans pay the price. In both countries, generations have known nothing but war, displacement, and loss. The children of the madrassas and refugee camps, born into poverty and indoctrination, become the cannon fodder for wars they never chose. Every time a bomb falls, another cycle of vengeance begins. The only way to end this is for Pakistan to dismantle the infrastructure of extremism it has built—its militant networks, ideological nurseries, and covert funding chains—and to accept that peace cannot be achieved through manipulation or force. The conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan is thus not just a border dispute or a counterterrorism campaign. It is the culmination of decades of duplicity—a nation at war with the ghosts it raised. Pakistan created the monastery of militancy, nourished it with ideology and money, and now finds itself devoured by its own creation. The flames burning along the Durand Line are not just consuming Afghan villages—they are consuming Pakistan’s own moral legitimacy, its economy, and its future. Until Pakistan confronts this truth, peace in South Asia will remain a mirage, forever out of reach, flickering behind the smoke of wars that never end.

Delhi Blast: Pakistan’s Army Is Doubling Down on Jihadist Proxies Again

– Arun Anand

India’s investigation into the bombing of November 10 near Delhi’s Red Fort has peeled back yet another layer of a problem that New Delhi has long warned the world about: Pakistan’s enduring role as a state sponsor and safe haven for jihadist terrorism. Fifteen people have been killed in the attack, carried out just two days after the Jammu and Kashmir Police quietly uncovered a sophisticated terror module operating far from the stereotypical image of gun-wielding militants. This network, led by highly educated professionals including doctors, has now been traced directly back to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and transnational Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (an affiliate of Al Qaeda), both Pakistan-based groups fostered by the country’s military establishment.

The arrests mark one of the most troubling cases in recent years — not only because of the carnage in the heart of the Indian capital but because of what they reveal about the evolution of Pakistan’s proxy warfare machinery. A “white-collar” terror module, with operatives embedded in colleges and hospitals, radicalised digitally, guided remotely and transnationally, and supervised by handlers working under the protective umbrella of Pakistan’s security apparatus, underscores how deeply entrenched and globally connected Islamabad’s militant factories remain.

For India, the revelation is hardly surprising. For the international community, it should be alarming. Indian security agencies have now established that the Delhi module’s leaders maintained active communication with Pakistan and Turkey-based controllers ostensibly linked to JeM chief Masood Azhar. If there were any doubts about JeM’s operational revival after years of supposed crackdowns in Pakistan and India’s Operation Sindoor, the Delhi blast should put them to rest. More importantly, the module’s exposure reiterates an uncomfortable truth: despite periodic claims of counter-terror reforms, Pakistan’s soil continues to nurture and export jihadist groups as an instrument of statecraft. Masood Azhar is believed to be living comfortably in Pakistan, protected rather than prosecuted.

The timing of this exposure is equally significant. They come on the heels of Operation Sindoor, India’s unprecedented cross-border strikes on May 6 and 7 targeting terrorist infrastructures across Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir and inside Pakistan’s heartland besides several military facilities. Among the targets was JeM’s headquarters in Bahawalpur, the Markaz Subhan Allah, where ten members of Azhar’s family and four of his trusted lieutenants were killed. It was acknowledged by his senior jihadi associate Ilyas Kashmiri who is on record stating that Azhar’s family was torn apart by Indian strikes.

What was instructive then was how senior Pakistan Army officers and civilian government officials were present at funerals for Azhar’s aides, thereby exposing Pakistan’s “good” and “bad” distinction of terrorists, which it often invoked to justify selective counterterrorism efforts.It is no secret how Pakistan has used terrorism as a key component of its regional policy since decades. Though it may have started with Afghan Jihad in 1980s, it successively patronised the establishment of a network of India focused groups such as JeM, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and Hizbul Mujahideen, ostensibly to bleed India at a minimal cost through this proxy war.

Be it the infrastructure for recruitment, training, and indoctrination, it has allowed these groups to thrive under various guises like religious charities, madrasa networks, social welfare groups, and sometimes openly paramilitary outfits. For instance, LeT of Hafiz Saeed is fronted by his Jamatud Dawa charitable organisation. What sets the present moment apart is not the existence of these groups but the brazenness with which they operate under Pakistan’s current military leadership. While Islamabad routinely assures global audiences that terrorist activity has been curbed, evidence on the ground suggests the opposite: terrorist organisations are diversifying their recruitment pools, expanding digital operations, improving financial concealment, and deepening their operational cooperation.

The Delhi module’s composition of educated, professionally accomplished individuals recruited ideologically rather than preying on economically vulnerable ones demonstrates a dangerous shift. These are not fringe radicals but inconspicuous by being embedded in mainstream society, efficient at building clean identities, and less likely to attract suspicion to travel freely and avoid security red flags. This is not the work of rogue actors. It reflects a coherent strategy. This appears to be getting systematised under current Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir under whom Pakistan is undergoing a dangerous power consolidation by the powerful military establishment. Munir’s actions suggest Pakistan Army’s old reliance on militant proxies returning even as the country itself grapples with heightened levels of extremism from its former proxies like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch nationalist insurgents.

Under Munir, the military has consolidated power across civilian institutions, tightened its grip on internal dissent, and centralised strategic decision-making. This is exemplified by the recent 27th Constitutional Amendment which provides the legal cover to Asim Munir’s actions by extending him lifetime of immunity as Field Marshal and making him the overall chief of all the armed forces of Pakistan. But on the question of terrorism, the signals have been unmistakable with groups like JeM and LeT still seen as vital instruments of Pakistan’s regional calculus. Moreover, Munir’s public rhetoric has grown more hawkish, echoing the confrontational doctrines of previous generals who viewed militancy as a cost-effective extension of state policy.

In that context, the presence of senior army officials at the funerals of JeM operatives killed during Operation Sindoor was more than symbolism; it was an official endorsement of the terror policy. It signalled to the jihadist ecosystem that Pakistan’s military elite remains committed to the decades-old compact: continue fighting India and, in exchange, receive protection, funding, and freedom of movement. Internationally, Pakistan has mastered the art of performing compliance. It arrests foot soldiers while sparing the leadership. It shutters organisations only to allow them to reappear under new names like The Resistance Front (TRF) for LeT and People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF) for JeM. It serves on the UN bodies on counterterrorism while patronising terrorists through the back door. The aim is not to eliminate terrorism but to manage it by tightening or loosening the tap depending on geopolitical incentives.

Unfortunately, Western governments led by the United States have often been complicit in allowing Pakistan to play this double game by prioritising short-term strategic interests. It has resulted in a perverse equilibrium where Pakistan may suffer from homegrown extremist violence and yet nurtures groups that attack its neighbours simultaneously.As such, the Delhi bombing and the terror module’s exposure should force a reassessment, as a country that cannot or will not dismantle the terror ecosystem responsible for destabilising an entire region cannot be treated as a credible partner in global counterterrorism. It is not merely a domestic law-and-order story of India but a reminder that Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure remains intact, adaptive, and internationally connected. It is also a warning that Pakistan’s military leadership, despite rhetorical commitments to stability, continues to rely on terrorism as a tool of state policy.

How US patronage of Pakistan enabled militancy and sustains risk of future 26/11 attacks

The history of US-Pakistan relations illustrate one of the most paradoxical alliances in modern geopolitics: a superpower that continuously funded, armed, and politically legitimized a state whose security establishment simultaneously fostered the very militant ecosystems that would later threaten American, Indian, Afghan, and global security. This contradiction — rooted in Cold War priorities, sustained through post-9/11 calculations, and shaped by Pakistan’s military-driven strategic doctrines –exposes how international patronage can inadvertently strengthen networks capable of producing catastrophic attacks such as the 2008 Mumbai assault. A deeper examination of this relationship, grounded in historical data and security evidence, raises the critical question of whether similar 26/11-type events could occur again under conditions that remain structurally unchanged. US–Pakistan ties took shape in the early Cold War years, when Washington sought military footholds to counter Soviet influence across Asia.

Pakistan, newly independent and searching for strategic allies, found in the United States a willing patron. Between 1954 and 1965 alone, Washington provided Pakistan more than $2.5 billion in economic and military assistance, with roughly 60% of this aid directed toward the armed forces. American weapons—F-86 Sabre jets, M-47 Patton tanks, artillery systems—quickly transformed Pakistan’s military capacity. However, the deeper impact was institutional — US assistance reinforced the Pakistan Army’s centrality in national politics, undermining civilian authority and contributing to successive military coups. By the time General Ayub Khan seized power in 1958, Pakistan’s military establishment was not only dominant but also deeply embedded in the country’s foreign policy outlook, particularly regarding India. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 further intensified this alliance.

The CIA’s Operation Cyclone, one of the largest covert programs in its history, funneled billions of dollars into Pakistan. Estimates place U.S. contributions at $3.2 billion during the 1980s, matched by roughly the same amount from Saudi Arabia. This funding, channeled largely through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the training and arming of more than 100,000 mujahideen fighters. The intention was clear: turn Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s quagmire. Yet the consequences were far more expansive. Pakistan’s security establishment selectively supported Islamist factions that aligned with its strategic interests, especially those capable of projecting influence into Afghanistan and later into Kashmir.

The militant infrastructure — the training camps near Peshawar, the radical madrassas in the northwest, the logistical corridors through tribal areas — became permanent fixtures, outliving the Soviet withdrawal. This transformation was not simply collateral damage; it was strategically cultivated.

The Pakistan Army’s doctrine of “asymmetric warfare” against India, combined with its pursuit of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, created incentives to preserve and deploy militant groups as instruments of foreign policy. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), founded in 1987 with ideological and logistical roots in the Afghan jihad, became one of the primary beneficiaries of this environment. Though the U.S. never directly funded LeT, the broader military-intelligence ecosystem—strengthened through U.S. patronage—allowed LeT to grow into a highly disciplined, militarized organization capable of executing cross-border operations with precision.

After 9/11, the U.S.–Pakistan relationship entered another high-stakes phase. Washington designated Pakistan a “major non-NATO ally,” providing more than $33 billion in aid between 2002 and 2018. Of this, $14.6 billion came in the form of Coalition Support Funds (CSF) meant to reimburse Pakistan for counterterrorism operations. Yet multiple U.S. audits revealed extensive misuse and misreporting.

The Government Accountability Office and Pentagon oversight bodies documented that Pakistan diverted CSF money to purchase conventional military equipment—F-16 upgrades, naval modernization, anti-ship missiles—none of which addressed the counterinsurgency challenges in Afghanistan or the internal militancy problem. Instead, this strengthened the Pakistan Army’s traditional posture against India while leaving intact the selective militant networks that Islamabad deemed assets rather than threats.

The consequences became evident as the Afghan Taliban rebounded throughout the 2004–2018 period. U.S. military commanders repeatedly testified before Congress that Taliban leaders operated from sanctuaries in Pakistan, specifically the Quetta Shura and Peshawar Shura. These safe havens contributed to the deaths of more than 2,400 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians. Despite receiving billions in U.S. aid, Pakistan’s military establishment maintained its dual policy: aggressive action against anti-state militants like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and permissive or supportive behavior toward groups aligned with its external goals, including the Afghan Taliban, Haqqani network, LeT, and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

This selective approach is not an allegation, but a pattern documented by scholars such as C. Christine Fair, Hussain Haqqani, and numerous U.S. intelligence assessments. The 26/11 Mumbai attack demonstrated the extent to which this militant ecosystem could project violence far beyond South Asia’s battlefield margins. The assault, which killed 166 people over three days, showcased training, coordination, and operational sophistication rarely seen outside state-assisted terrorism. David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American operative who conducted reconnaissance for the attacks, admitted in U.S. court that he received training at LeT camps and interacted with individuals connected to Pakistan’s security establishment.

Several planners of the attack, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, operated visibly within Pakistan for years—arrested only under international pressure and often released under opaque judicial processes. U.S. Treasury designations between 2010 and 2018 repeatedly named Pakistan-based LeT operatives, charities, and funding nodes, underscoring the persistent ecosystem that enabled the attack. Pakistan has undoubtedly suffered tremendously from terrorism. Over 70,000 Pakistanis, including civilians and soldiers, were killed in terror violence between 2001 and 2020. Major military operations such as Zarb-e-Azb (2014) and Radd-ul-Fasaad (2017) significantly reduced attacks inside Pakistan by targeting anti-state militants. However, these campaigns maintained the structural distinction between groups that threaten Pakistan internally and those used for external leverage. This dichotomy allowed LeT, JeM, and elements of the Afghan Taliban to survive—even as Pakistan publicly committed to counterterrorism under U.S. and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) pressure.

This selective counterterrorism is central to understanding the ongoing risks of another 26/11-type event. Although Pakistan has taken steps to restrict the activities of certain militant groups, especially under FATF supervision from 2018 to 2022, these measures remain fragmented and reversible. The ideological infrastructure remains largely intact: networks of radical madrassas, veteran trainers from decades of conflict, logistical safe houses, and diaspora-linked financing channels. The organizational DNA of groups like L eT—a disciplined chain of command, military-style training, and operational secrecy—has not been erased. These conditions are far more resilient than tactical bans or symbolic arrests. Moreover, the geopolitical incentives for Pakistan’s security establishment remain largely unchanged. India’s rising global profile—economically, diplomatically, and militarily—intensifies Pakistan’s reliance on asymmetric strategies.

The Pakistan Army’s institutional dominance over foreign policy means these strategies are deeply embedded, not easily abandoned. Even if direct support decreases, passive tolerance or covert facilitation of certain groups can enable them to survive, regroup, or innovate. In an era of drone technology, encrypted communication, and decentralized networks, the possibilities for a future attack are more diffuse and harder to detect.

A 26/11-type event does not require identical conditions; it requires only that a militant group possess the intent, some operational capability, and a permissive or fragmented security environment. Pakistan’s history of selective enforcement creates exactly such an environment. While Islamabad has made commitments under FATF and international pressure, the durability of these reforms remains uncertain. Past behavior—both during and after foreign aid cycles—suggests that once external scrutiny subsides, Pakistan’s security establishment often recalibrates rather than reforms.

The long arc of U.S.–Pakistan relations thus reveal a troubling pattern: American patronage consistently strengthened Pakistan’s military institutions while doing little to align their strategic priorities with global security concerns. This misalignment allowed militant networks to thrive under a shield of deniability. The ecosystem that once produced 26/11 was not an aberration but a by-product of systemic policies, and unless those systems fundamentally change, the risk of future large-scale attacks cannot be dismissed as remote.

–IANS

The Dump Truck Doctrine: Pakistan’s Strategy of Disruption that Keeps Terror Alive in South Asia

– Arun Anand

Pakistan’s leaders, both political and military, have long relied on self-serving metaphors to shape the domestic sociopolitical sphere and frame their country’s place in the broader region. Often delivered with a dramaturgical embellishment, these analogies do more than reflect insecurity or national mythmaking. They reveal a deeper strategic mindset in which Pakistan sees value in disruption, leverage through instability, and the cultivation of terrorism as a tool of statecraft.

The latest examples come from Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, which has historically dominated the country’s political and security architecture. It started with Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s interaction with expatriates in Florida, United States, in August this year, wherein he deployed a comparison that captured headlines for its brazenness. “India is a shining Mercedes coming on a highway like a Ferrari,” he said. “But we are a dump truck full of gravel. If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”

On its surface, such remarks appeared to emphasize resilience: that Pakistan as a lumbering truck may not be glamorous, but it can endure any difficulty and overcome any obstacle. Yet the real significance of this ironical analogy lies elsewhere. It implies that Pakistan retains the capability as well as readiness to cause strategic disruption, even at great cost to itself, and in doing so shape regional outcomes. The metaphor glorifies collision as an equalizer. It suggests that while India surges economically and diplomatically, Pakistan’s relevance lies in its ability to destabilize.

A parallel metaphor that is being increasingly used by the country’s political and military elite describes Pakistan as a “railway engine”, that is portrays it on a slow, traditional, yet persistent mode of progress. The image is meant to frame Pakistan as foundational to South Asian stability, chugging along in contrast to India’s sleek modernization. Implicit in this imagery is the claim that the region’s momentum, direction, and safety can still be both set and derailed by Pakistan’s choices.

Such analogies may seem rhetorical to common masses and yet contain within them a longstanding doctrine of purposeful disruption that Pakistan has employed in the last several decades. It is based on its decades-old strategic worldview wherein it has consistently valorized confrontation, framing India as an existential threat, and more domestically more significant objective of positioning proxy-terrorism as a legitimate extension of state power.

Such a propagandistic rhetoric has found currency amidst Asim Munir’s sweeping consolidation of authority through constitutional amendments to expanded control over the judiciary, nuclear command, and internal security. This narrative push is designed to reinforce his martial narrative that Pakistan may be economically battered, politically unstable, and diplomatically isolated, but it remains capable of inflicting damage that forces global attention.

As such, while Pakistan’s establishment may dress its messaging in fresh metaphors, the underlying doctrine has barely evolved. Since the 26/11 attacks by ISI supported Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists in Mumbai, there has been little substantive reckoning within Pakistan about the use of terrorist groups as strategic assets. If anything, the rhetoric of state officials in the years since reveals continuity, not change.

It should be noted that there has been consensus within Pakistani establishment, as exposed by the statements from senior retired generals, political leaders, and religious ideologues, who often reiterate that proxy terrorism can be a “force multiplier” against India. Such an argument has been repeatedly framed as asymmetric necessity given that since Pakistan cannot match New Delhi conventionally, so it must leverage “non-state actors” to disrupt India’s rise even as its own economy falters. It explains why and how terrorist groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed have been normalized within the socio-political discourse of the country by portraying terrorists as instruments of pressure than what they are: terrorists.

This mindset is reflected not only in Pakistan’s reluctance to prosecute figures like Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar, but also in its sustained tolerance of groups that openly espouse cross-border terrorism sold as so-called jihad. And the danger of such rhetoric is not abstract as it has recurrently translated into violence that has spilled far beyond India’s borders. Be it 26/11 attacks of 2008 in India or the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001, these showcased how such a mentality that the Pakistani establishment patronises can have devastating human costs.

Just as the 9/11 attacks targeted symbols of American openness and global leadership which the world forever, 26/11 targeted India’s cosmopolitan identity to sow internal discord and disrupt its global economic rise. Therefore, should Pakistan’s leadership continue to present disruption as strategic leverage, as they are doing currently, the risk of mass-casualty attacks would remain unacceptably high.

Seen from such a lens, Asim Munir’s use of analogies like ‘dump truck’ or the ‘railway engine’ are not harmless political theatre. It is a reflection of a national mindset of a country of mismanaged economy, which is unable to compete with rising India in any domain, sees strategic relevance in the threat of sabotage. It is a worldview that sees regional equilibrium not in growth or cooperation but in managed instability maintained through terrorist proxies. And that worldview does not confine risk to South Asia, which is why Pakistan’s analogies matter.

In such a scenario, while India cannot afford any complacency, it makes it implicit on the international community to acknowledge that South Asian terrorism, especially when linked to state sponsorship like Pakistan’s role, poses a threat transcending national borders.

Nevertheless, two lessons stand out. Firstly, there needs to be greater transnational intelligence synergy at the international level. For instance, given that countries like India, the United States, the EU, Israel, Southeast Asian partners, and Gulf states, have a shared interest in tackling terrorism, they would need to bolster real-time intelligence exchange, establish joint tracking of financing networks, and coordinated monitoring of extremist propaganda.

Secondly, diplomatic isolation of terror-sponsoring frameworks is no longer optional. The world must explicitly differentiate between Pakistan as a nation and Pakistan’s security apparatus as a destabilizing actor and shape policy accordingly. This is because civilian government is a façade in that country as it is overwhelmingly dominated by the military establishment.

Therefore, the “dump truck” and “railway engine” analogies may have been meant to project endurance, but they expose a darker truth of Pakistan’s military leadership’s outdated belief that regional power can be exercised through disruption and not development. Unless such a mindset is confronted at political, diplomatic, and strategic levels, the international community should rest assured that its risks will not be borne by India alone.

Bleeding Borders and Broken Masks: Pakistan Army’s Desperate Dance with Terror

The fading aftermath of a lost battle continues to smoulder quietly, and for Pakistan’s armed forces—particularly its beleaguered army under its current Chief—these remnants represent not resilience, but a lingering, unhealed wound. This wound was inflicted by the overwhelming setback suffered during India’s precisely orchestrated Operation Sindoor. The mission effectively laid bare the vulnerabilities and superficial nature of Pakistan’s covert strategies along the Line of Control (LoC). In the wake of this defeat, the response from Pakistan was not one of reflection or strategic recalibration, but rather a recommitment to exhausted methods—chiefly, the long-standing practice of sponsoring terrorism. This shadow conflict, which Pakistan has cultivated for decades, has recently been reignited with intensified zeal and even more ominous intent. Operation Sindoor dismantled the myth that the Pakistan Army maintains superiority in asymmetric warfare across the LoC. Employing intelligence-led targeting, coordinated civilian-military operations within Kashmir, and precision strikes, India succeeded in destroying several of Pakistan’s key terrorist infrastructure points. Numerous high-ranking handlers, operating in proximity to frontline military positions, were also neutralised. Pakistan’s infamous Border Action Teams, unprepared for the scale and precision of the assault, suffered significant losses. Reinforcements dispatched under the assumption of surprise advantage were instead ambushed with lethal efficiency. Conservative estimates suggest that more than 70 Pakistani regular troops and special forces were either killed or incapacitated in the course of the operation. However, these figures remain unacknowledged by Pakistan’s military media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), based in Rawalpindi.

The consequences extended beyond a mere tactical defeat—it marked a profound symbolic breakdown. The veil was lifted, revealing to the international community the unmistakable nexus between the Pakistan Army and terrorist organisations falsely presented as ideological movements. As Pakistan’s military leadership staggered under the impact—wounded both physically and psychologically—it did not pursue introspection or institutional reform. Instead, its response was fuelled by vengeance. With its credibility in tatters and domestic cohesion eroded by mounting economic distress, the military hierarchy resorted to its familiar playbook: reinforcing the architecture of cross-border terrorism. Within the rugged landscapes of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), a fresh wave of militant training camps began to emerge—spreading like malignant growths. The same geography that once served as refuge for insurgents in the early 2000s is being repurposed—not to defend, but to initiate offensive operations aimed at infiltration and sabotage. These installations are far more advanced than rudimentary jungle shelters; they are heavily fortified compounds, featuring structured obstacle courses, dedicated firing ranges, encrypted communication hubs, and efficient logistics chains—all operated with military-level discipline and overseen directly by Pakistani officers of field rank.

In the interior regions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), satellite surveillance and signal intelligence have revealed a notable uptick in activity linked to operatives of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba—groups ostensibly proscribed by Pakistan but, in reality, sustained and armed by its military-intelligence apparatus. Historic infiltration routes through Kupwara, Uri, and Poonch are being revitalised, now augmented with modern techniques involving drone-based supply drops, underground tunnel systems, and nocturnal incursions enhanced by GPS jamming technologies. The danger lies not in covert denial, but in a conscious intensification of hostile intent. The Chief of the Pakistan Army, acutely conscious of the country’s precarious diplomatic and economic condition, is engaging in a hazardous strategic gamble. With increasing scrutiny over his leadership both within military circles and among the broader public, he appears driven to recapture a faltering narrative through the use of “strategic proxies.” Terrorism remains the most potent instrument in Rawalpindi’s longstanding arsenal—an instrument now employed with alarming recklessness. His leadership, beleaguered by internal factionalism and an unparalleled erosion of legitimacy, seems fixated not on reform or peaceful coexistence, but on expanding clandestine conflict. Alarmingly, this ideological decay is no longer confined to PoK. The most disconcerting evolution is now taking root within Pakistan’s Punjab province. Once regarded as the cultural nucleus and a relatively secular space in the national context, Punjab is experiencing a covert revival of urban terror infrastructure. In cities such as Lahore, Bahawalpur, and Multan, dormant terrorist cells are being discreetly reactivated. These are not improvised militias of disenfranchised youth armed with outdated weapons; they are increasingly professionalised units under the instruction of retired ISI personnel, many of whom now operate under the guise of NGOs, charitable entities, or religious seminaries. These fronts offer both ideological justification and logistical support for what appears to be a quietly resurgent domestic terror ecosystem.

Amidst an ongoing civil-military power struggle, one aspect of the Pakistani state’s machinery remains untouched: the consistent prioritisation of defence funding and so-called “strategic programmes.” Despite a population grappling with soaring prices of basic commodities such as wheat and petrol, billions of rupees continue to be funnelled into clandestine military activities. International aid, ostensibly allocated for flood recovery and infrastructure development, has seemingly vanished into unaccounted defence-related expenditures. The directives issued by the Army Chief appear concerned less with professional armed forces modernisation and more with psychological operations, refining doctrines of insurgency, and sustaining strategic equilibrium through non-state proxies rather than overt confrontation. Ironically, this intensified focus on exporting militancy coincides with the military’s own struggle against a growing insurgency within national borders. The tribal regions, once controlled through sheer force and temporary truces, are experiencing renewed unrest. Militant organisations such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), emboldened by regional instability and the decline of American presence in Afghanistan, have launched an aggressive internal campaign, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. These insurgents have evolved beyond hit-and-run tactics; they now execute coordinated ambushes, capture military outposts, and even target mid-level officers for assassination. By conservative estimates, the Pakistani military has suffered more than 400 fatalities from militant assaults within its own borders over the past year. In North Waziristan alone, targeted attacks since January have claimed the lives of at least 80 soldiers. Yet, in the face of such heavy losses, the Army Chief’s priorities appear skewed—focused less on internal security and more on provoking tensions across the Line of Control. It seems the military establishment has acquiesced to a state of perpetual violence, both domestically and externally, in a bid to uphold its strategic narrative. Even more troubling is the army’s renewed alignment with radical ideological movements. A network of newly established madrasas—many reportedly funded by Wahhabi donors from the Gulf—has emerged across southern Punjab and rural Sindh. These institutions are not simply centres of religious study but have become active recruitment hubs. Children are subjected to extremist indoctrination, trained in the use of firearms by adolescence, and taught to view martyrdom across the LoC as a sacred obligation. Intelligence surveillance has recorded a 40% surge in new recruit movement towards training facilities in PoK, signalling that the terror infrastructure is not merely operational, but expanding at an alarming pace.

In recent months, Indian intelligence agencies have intercepted a number of disturbing communications. In one exchange, a Pakistani handler claims to have “fifty fresh mujahideen ready for deployment in Poonch.” In another, an ISI operative provides precise instructions for drone drop locations within Indian territory. These individuals are not unsanctioned actors; rather, they operate openly under the protection of the military, frequently utilising official vehicles and accessing military-grade hardware. Simultaneously, Pakistan’s diplomatic representatives persistently deny any involvement by the state. However, the emerging pattern is far too consistent, deliberate, and institutionally embedded to be dismissed as coincidental. Repeatedly, whenever Pakistan experiences internal turmoil—be it economic hardship, political instability, or military dissent—it reverts to its traditional strategy of asymmetric aggression. A noticeable increase in ceasefire violations often follows periods of domestic unrest. Likewise, each instance of public criticism directed at the Army Chief seems to coincide with a renewed infiltration effort across the Line of Control.

Pakistan’s current strategy reflects both desperation and peril.

For a nation grappling with a crisis of legitimacy, burdened by mounting debt, and increasingly isolated on the international stage, the promotion of terrorism has ceased to be merely a tactic—it has become a lifeline. However, the consequences of this approach are proving to be overwhelmingly detrimental. With a society marked by deep internal fractures, a politically polarised environment, and a growing insurgency, the country teeters on the brink of internal collapse. Despite this, its military leadership remains fixated on outdated notions, still pursuing the illusion of strategic depth that effectively disappeared decades ago. The current course charted by the Army Chief reflects not a path towards military success, but one of reckless obstinacy. By continuously dispatching more terrorists across the Line of Control, he not only provokes a more capable adversary, but also accelerates the erosion of Pakistan’s future under the crushing weight of its own misguided ambitions.

Pakistan: A State at War with its Own People

Every time one looks up Pakistan on the internet, one is bombarded with news of death, destruction, and discrimination. The country, which was carved out of India in 1948, with the vision of creating a safe territory for the minorities of the subcontinent, has devolved into a place where the majority of people endure some or the other form of oppression and threats, under a state that is always on the edge of collapse. Most recently, a disturbing video of a man and woman being shot to death by a bunch of men in the Balochistan province has emerged on social media. Investigation has revealed it to be a case of so-called ‘honor killing’ ordered by a local tribal leader and executed by the woman’s brother. Such killings based on archaic notions of ‘honor’, gender-based violence, persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, civilian killings by militants, and state-orchestrated killings in the name of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, and more, pervade the news cycle in the country where the elites who lead the security forces are immersed in amassing political and economic capital, more than providing security to the citizens.

Although Pakistan has a long history of being both a promoter and victim of terrorism, the crisis has particularly aggravated since the August 2021 resurgence of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. As the US left the country after a 20-year-long protracted war, much of the sophisticated weaponry that it had provided for the Afghan army found itself in the hands of the Taliban and Pakistan-based militant insurgent groups, specifically the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Overnight, these groups swelled in capacity, exacerbating the security crisis for Pakistani forces as well as civilians. The Global Terrorism Index report of 2025 placed Pakistan in the 2^nd position, noting 1,081 terrorism-related fatalities and 1,099 terrorist attacks in 2024.

In the past years, these groups have also scaled up their attacks on Pakistanis from other provinces as well as foreigners, particularly Chinese workers. In August last year, in a chilling incident, the BLA militants forced out 23 passengers from a civilian bus, checked their identity cards, and killed them after establishing that they were Punjabis. In March 2024, a suicide bombing killed 5 Chinese engineers working on a dam project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The rise in attacks on Chinese workers has become a sore point between Pakistan and China, threatening to jeopardize the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Additionally, the Pakistani military’s response to these terrorist groups has also opened up another security threat for the people. In Balochistan, in the name of countering the long-standing insurgency, the state has routinized enforced disappearances, custodial killings, and torture, without any accountability. Although it is very difficult to ascertain the exact number of forcefully disappeared people, to get an idea of the scale of this tragedy, one can refer to the Human Rights Watch report which has recorded 8,463 cases of missing persons between 2011 and January 2024 or the Pakistan Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED) which registered 10,078 cases. A civil resistance movement led by women has also emerged in the past couple of years, demanding accountability from the state for its excesses in Balochistan. However, it has been violently quelled, with its leaders incarcerated.

Since the founding of Pakistan on religious lines, there has been a concerted effort by the state to marginalize and erase its religious minorities, most prominently Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs. Besides systemic discrimination, cultural marginalization, and destruction of places of worship, religious minorities constantly face the threat of violence, ostracization, and forced conversions. Around 20-25 Hindu girls are estimated to be kidnapped and converted in Sindh every month. The police and judiciary often exempt the perpetrators who often enjoy social influence and support for ‘scoring’ a conversion to Islam. The draconian blasphemy law is another tool with which religious and sectarian minorities (Shias and Ahmadis) are persecuted. More disturbingly, when someone weaponizes the blasphemy accusation, often the cases do not even reach the courts as the enraged public murders the accused by themselves. At least 70 people have been reportedly murdered over blasphemy accusations since 1990. This figure includes the notorious killing of the Sri Lankan Christian worker Priyantha Kumara. The discourse around the law is so charged that anyone who dares to oppose it faces the same threat of being lynched. Prominent political figures such as the former governor of Punjab Salman Taseer and former Federal Minister for Minorites Shahbaz Bhatti have been assassinated for opposing the law, and judges who either convict vigilantes or acquit the falsely accused have to flee the country to save their lives.

When it comes to women, regressive social attitudes and a decrepit administration have led to a scenario where crimes like harassment are only routine but normalized. According to a Women Safety Audit undertaken by UN Women in 2020, over 80% women reported facing harassment in public places. Women are also the overwhelming targets of so-called honour killings- the Human Rights Commission of the country registered 405 cases in 2024 alone, most of them against women. As per data by the Sustainable Social Development Organization, only one of the 32 cases reported in the Balochistan province this year has led to a conviction, pointing to the dire situation where state neglect has emboldened criminals and proliferated such a heinous crime.

Despite the terrifying picture that the above instances and analyses paint about Pakistan, it is still only scratching the surface. In a country beset with administrative disrepair, state-supported religious extremism, ethnic violence, systemic impunity, suppression of dissent, and economic crisis, one can only imagine the daily struggle for survival that people are subjected to. Pakistan urgently requires a radical overhaul of state identity, civil-military relations, and state-society relations. However, given the status quo of absolute state complacency and elite capture, the future of the citizens of the country appears distressingly grim.

U.S. Terror Tag on TRF Exposes Pakistan’s Proxy Network, Validates India’s Stand

In a blow to Pakistan’s policy of employing terror as a tool of its regional policy for decades, the United States State Department on 18 July officially designated The Resistance Front (TRF) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

This decision validates what India has long claimed that TRF is not an indigenous militant group, but a proxy for the Pakistan-based jihadi organization Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which was established to cover up Pakistan’s continued patronisation of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

The US designation follows the ghastly April 22, 2025, Pahalgam attack in which 26 Hindu pilgrims were massacred following religio-based segregation by the terrorists. It was the worst attack on Indian civilians since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, incidentally also mounted by LeT under the broader tutelage of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), as growing body of evidence has substantiated since. When the TRF claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam massacre, it was a grim reminder of Islamabad’s unaltered terror playbook of decades that has seen it patronise groups to mount asymmetric proxy war in Kashmir.

India welcomed the U.S. move, calling it “a timely and important step reflecting the deep cooperation between India and the United States on counter-terrorism.” In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs emphasized that “India remains committed to a policy of zero tolerance towards terrorism and will continue to work closely with its international partners to ensure that terrorist organizations and their proxies are held accountable.”

A Proxy by Design

The Resistance Front is not a spontaneous insurgent movement. It is a repackaged extension of LeT, launched in 2019 as global scrutiny tightened around Pakistan’s state-sponsored terror ecosystem. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had grey-listed Islamabad in 2018, citing its failure to clamp down on financing for groups like LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Under international pressure, Pakistan sought to cloak its support to jihadist organizations in a local garb. Thus, TRF was born as the latest attempt to give LeT’s radical Islamist violence a territorial and “indigenous” facelift. Likewise, JeM also rechristened itself and created its own proxy called People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAAF), which has also engaged in dozens of terrorist acts across Jammu and Kashmir.

TRF’s rhetoric attempted to depart from the overtly Islamist discourse of LeT, presenting instead a façade of Kashmiri nationalism. But this branding exercise was superficial. Intelligence reports have consistently revealed that TRF receives logistical, operational, and financial backing from LeT leadership operating freely in Pakistan, under the tacit protection of the Pakistani state.

From coordinated attacks on Indian security personnel to targeted killings of civilians, including the June 9, 2024, assault on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in Reasi district, TRF has steadily built a grisly record of violence across the Union Territory of J&K. Each of its violent acts have borne the unmistakable imprint of LeT’s operational style, which have been coordinated, brutal, and designed to provoke communal polarization and unrest in the region.

A Victory for Indian Diplomacy

That TRF’s designation as a global terrorist group has occurred even as Islamabad has been actively lobbying Washington for renewed military and financial cooperation is no coincidence. It is the result of sustained Indian diplomacy of years, particularly after the Pahalgam massacre. In its the immediate aftermath, India has undertaken a full-spectrum offensive against terrorism originating from Pakistan which includes both diplomatic, and military.

On the military front, Operation Sindoor was launched on May 6/7 targeting and destroying terror launchpads and logistical hubs across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) and mainland Pakistan through calibrated cross-border strikes. Simultaneously, India mobilized its diplomatic repertoire to expose the role of Pakistan’s deep state in grooming and guiding terror outfits, not just in Kashmir but across the broader South Asian region. Under this, over half a dozen delegations of Members of Parliament and diplomats visited 33 countries providing irrefutable evidence of Islamabad’s culpability, including communications intercepts and intelligence dossiers, that linked TRF attacks directly to handlers based in Pakistan.

The campaign specifically also targeted the members of United Nations Security Council members, both permanent and non-permanent, excluding China, which has emerged as a major shield for Pakistan at global forums over the last decade. With this decision from Washington, New Delhi has succeeded in reframing discourse on how Pakistan’s state-backed terrorist infrastructure threatens regional and global peace.

Pakistan’s Duplicity Exposed

Pakistan’s strategy of using jihadist groups as “strategic assets” while maintaining a veneer of plausible deniability is no longer tenable. By operating through proxy outfits like TRF and PAFF, Islamabad hoped to evade global scrutiny while continuing its decades-long covert war in Kashmir. But the U.S. designation cuts through that obfuscation.

“The TRF is a Lashkar-e-Toiba front and proxy,” Secretary Rubio’s statement declared unequivocally, removing any diplomatic ambiguity. The move also comes at a time when Pakistan’s military establishment has been aggressively attempting to reset ties with Washington, offering its resources and positioning its strategic geography as a potential gateway for U.S. re-engagement in Afghanistan and Central Asia, as well as contain Iran. But the TRF designation puts Pakistan on the backfoot, reaffirming that no strategic calculus can be allowed to eclipse the imperative of countering terrorism.

A Message to the Global South

The U.S. move also carries implications beyond South Asia. For years, New Delhi has struggled to persuade many Global South countries, who see Pakistan as a fellow victim of terrorism, of the duplicity of its neighbour’s approach. The designation of TRF by the United States, after painstaking efforts by Indian diplomats, should mark an end to this duplicity, as this decision lends credence to New Delhi’s repeated assertions that terrorism must be addressed uniformly, not selectively. The strong condemnation of the Pahalgam massacre by BRICS a few weeks ago, where even traditionally Pakistan-friendly nations refrained from shielding it, reflects this slow but steady shift in sentiment.

India has long advocated for a “no distinction” policy when it comes to terrorism, which is a stance undermined by the geopolitical calculations of major powers. But the TRF episode proves that, with the right strategy, facts on the ground can overcome narratives built on denial and deflection.

Toward Accountability

India’s challenge now lies in sustaining the momentum. Designation is one step; dismantling the financial and logistical architecture that sustains such groups is another. India has pushed for the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which mandates state accountability in curbing terrorism financing. The hope is that the TRF’s designation will compel financial institutions, regional bodies, and multilateral platforms to act decisively against those who shelter, fund, or excuse such entities.

Therefore, as India inches closer to its goal of internationalising the campaign against Pakistan’s proxy war, the TRF designation is more than a symbolic gesture. It should be seen as a diplomatic and strategic success, one that not only exposes Pakistan’s two-faced approach but also signals that the world is seeing through its “terror by proxy” strategy.

From Peaks to Glory: The Grit of the Indian Soldier in Kargil

Twenty-six years ago, a bold infiltration in the Kargil region jolted the nation, as armed intruders crossed the border and occupied key high-altitude positions on India’s side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. Initially believed to be militants, the infiltrators were later confirmed to be part of a carefully planned covert military offensive—Operation Badr—conducted by the Pakistan Army.

The objective was to secure a strategic advantage in the Kashmir region, sever India’s vital link to Siachen by cutting off Indian troops, compel their withdrawal, and ultimately facilitate the occupation of all of Kashmir. This incursion came just months after India and Pakistan had signed the historic Lahore Declaration, a bilateral agreement aimed at reducing tensions and resolving disputes through peaceful means and mutual respect for territorial sovereignty. The summer of 1999 thus marked Pakistan’s breach of this landmark accord and India’s decisive countermeasure through the launch of Operation Vijay.

The Kargil War of 1999 marked the first conventional conflict between two nuclear-armed states. What distinguishes this war is its conduct at extreme altitudes, spanning a 170-kilometre stretch of the Himalayan frontier, where Indian troops contended not only with hostile forces but also with harsh environmental conditions. Operating in low-oxygen environments, Indian soldiers ascended steep, icy cliffs—ranging between 8,000 and 18,000 feet—under relentless enemy fire to dislodge opposing forces and reclaim Indian territory. This conflict was, therefore, not merely a battle against a hostile adversary, well-entrenched in fortified bunkers with weapons poised, but also a confrontation with the unforgiving forces of nature. Despite the tactical advantage held by the enemy, Indian soldiers exhibited extraordinary perseverance, selflessness, and determination, rendering this military triumph one of the most revered in the nation’s history.

Victory in war is not solely determined by advanced weaponry, and the Kargil conflict serves as a definitive example. Indian troops, in fact, were not equipped with adequate mountaineering gear necessary for scaling the steep, frozen inclines. Despite these material shortcomings, they demonstrated the capacity to improvise, adapt, and overcome the obstacles before them, owing to their rigorous training in high-altitude warfare. Yet, the decisive factor in securing this victory was the spirit of camaraderie, which uplifted morale and inspired Indian soldiers to confront the entrenched enemy positions. This hard-won triumph still resonates through the words “Yeh Dil Maange More,” radioed by Captain Vikram Batra of the 13 J&K Rifles following the re-capture of Point 5140, the highest peak of Tololing. Captain Batra and his men then advanced to reclaim Point 4875 in the Mushkoh Valley, significantly shifting the momentum in India’s favour. It was here that the young officer laid down his life while attempting to save a fellow soldier from enemy fire. Beyond strategic prowess, Captain Batra embodied exceptional courage and leadership at merely 24 years of age, for which he was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra, the nation’s highest military honour.

Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav of the Ghatak platoon was merely 19 years old when he sustained at least 15 gunshot wounds from enemy fire while ascending the cliff face during the assault on Tiger Hill. Despite his severe injuries, Yadav continued to advance as the unit’s sole survivor, ultimately destroying enemy bunkers with grenades and engaging in close-quarter combat to eliminate opposing soldiers, thereby clearing the path for his platoon to reclaim the strategic heights. As the youngest recipient of the Param Vir Chakra, Yogendra Singh Yadav recounts his extraordinary feat of courage with profound humility. Others, such as Major Rajesh Singh Adhikari (18 Grenadiers), Major Vivek Gupta (2 Rajputana Rifles), and Naik Digendra Kumar (2 Rajputana Rifles), led their men along the Tololing Ridge, targeting enemy bunkers, eliminating adversaries, and facilitating troop advancement—often at the cost of their own lives. These narratives, among many others, depict valiant soldiers shielding comrades from constant enemy assault, neutralising enemy positions before succumbing to fatal injuries, and enabling the Indian Army to reclaim national territory. Their collective sacrifice and indomitable spirit define the unmatched heroism of Operation Vijay.

The morale of the Indian Army received widespread public acclaim alongside robust institutional backing, standing in marked contrast to the approach adopted by its adversary. Pakistan’s Operation Badr was reportedly conceived in secrecy by a select group of senior military generals, excluding the Nawaz Sharif-led civilian government from the planning process. This not only compromised Pakistan’s democratic framework but also laid bare the entrenched influence of the country’s deep state. The covert nature of the operation and subsequent diplomatic isolation led to severe embarrassment for Pakistan’s civilian leadership, which initially denied the involvement of regular Pakistani troops in Kargil, portraying the infiltrators as ‘mujahideen’. Even after confirmation of identities of deceased Pakistani soldiers, the government refused to claim their bodies, keeping their families uninformed. It was Indian soldiers who performed the burials of many Pakistani troops with full military honours, accompanied by Muslim clerics conducting rites in accordance with Islamic customs. Notably, the body of Pakistani Captain Karnal Sher Khan was returned with a letter from Indian Brigadier M.P.S. Bajwa, commending Sher Khan’s courage and urging Pakistan to bestow military recognition. Although belated, Captain Sher Khan was posthumously awarded Pakistan’s highest military decoration—the Nishan-e-Haider. Twenty-five years later, the Pakistan Army formally acknowledged its involvement in the Kargil conflict, with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif publicly conceding the strategic misjudgement.

The Indian Army’s hoisting of the tricolour atop Tiger Hill on 4 July 1999—overlooking National Highway 1D, the vital lifeline of Ladakh—following its recapture from Pakistani forces, endures as a powerful emblem of national sovereignty, safeguarded by the unwavering dedication of Indian soldiers. It continues to stand as a profound symbol of territorial integrity, preserved through the courage and sacrifice of Indian troops. As the nation commemorates Kargil Vijay Diwas on 26 July, it is a moment to honour those who laid down their lives in defence of every inch of our homeland, as well as those who continue to uphold the national flag with unwavering pride.

Pakistan’s Terror Playbook is being Exposed and the Global South is Watching

When 26 civilians were massacred in Pahalgam tourist spot of Kashmir on April 22, 2025, it sent immediate shockwaves across India. But what has followed since may mark a turning point in how the world, particularly the Global South, responds to terrorism, particularly when it comes to state-sponsored acts of it.

For decades, India has sounded the alarm about Pakistan’s use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, especially in Jammu and Kashmir. And quite often, its warnings were met with scepticism, diluted in diplomatic language, or lost in the geopolitical noise of the broader South Asian region. But the brutality of the Pahalgam attack, and the growing body of evidence linking the perpetrators to Pakistan-based groups, along with shifting geopolitical dynamics seems to have brought a considerable change in that conversation.

More significantly, India’s response this time was also swift and multipronged. Under Operation Sindoor on May 6-7, it launched a precise and calibrated military retaliation targeting terror infrastructure across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) and mainland Pakistan. The military operation was accompanied by its diplomatic offensive, which has been very methodical and effective as the changing discourse about terrorism reflects. The culmination of these efforts was on full display at the 2025 BRICS+ Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the Global South bloc issued an unambiguous condemnation of a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, naming both the incident and its nature, which is remarkable.

The BRICS+ declaration stated it “condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025, during which 26 people were killed and many more injured,” and reaffirmed a collective commitment to fighting terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations, including the cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorism financing and safe havens.”

This was not just diplomatic cliché and marks a quiet but significant pivot in the emerging world order where the Global South bloc is finally calling out double standards on terrorism, and doing so with rare unanimity.

A Shift in Global Norms

The Global South has long been a theatre of conflicting narratives when it comes to terrorism. While Western powers often dominate the discourse around extremism, violence in the Global South, whether in South Asia, West Asia, Southeast Asia, or African continent, has received a more selective treatment. However, that seems to be now changing.

India’s diplomatic campaign, strengthened by real-time evidence and growing solidarity among peer economies, is spotlighting how selective empathy and geopolitical hedging allow state-backed terror proxies to thrive. The BRICS+ statement, endorsed even by countries like China, which shares close strategic partnership with Pakistan, signals that this silence may no longer be tenable in the long run.

Indeed, the real headline from Rio wasn’t just that the Pahalgam attack was condemned. It was that China did not block the language of the declaration. This is significant given the depth of China-Pakistan strategic cooperation, especially under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) framework, and Beijing’s long-standing practice of shielding Pakistani entities and terrorists like Masood Azhar from censure in global forums such as the UN Security Council (UNSC). Moreover, as per multiple independent assessments, Pakistan is heavily dependent on Chinese-origin military equipment whose share has grown over 80 percent of its conventional arsenal. Therefore, for China to allow a declaration that highlights cross-border terrorism, which may be a veiled but yet has an unmistakable reference to Pakistan, is nothing short of a diplomatic milestone for India.

The Growing Evidence of Pakistan’s Terror sponsorship

India’s case against Pakistan is no longer just about moral outrage. It is now substantiated by tangible, corroborated evidence that paints a picture of systemic complicity. According to Indian intelligence reports shared with international partners, including with the UNSC’s 1267 Sanctions Committee, in the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, the attackers belonged to a faction of The Resistance Front (TRF), which is a proxy outfit widely recognized as a rebranded arm of Pakistan sponsored terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Both LeT and its affiliate networks have long enjoyed safe havens in Pakistan, with little meaningful action taken against their leadership despite international pressure and FATF conditions.

For years, Pakistan has relied on plausible deniability, labelling these groups as “non-state actors” beyond its control. But that narrative is wearing thin, particularly when attacks like Pahalgam are followed by the same tell-tale signs: trained cadres, sophisticated arms, and ideological alignment with Pakistan’s strategic calculus on Kashmir.

The BRICS+ Moment

The BRICS+ platform, which originally established by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and then South Africa and has now expanded to include key economies such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE, is increasingly seen as the voice of the Global South. It provides a forum for new powers to voice their concerns free from the historical constraints of Cold War dichotomies or Western alliances.

The Rio summit’s declaration on terrorism suggests that member states are no longer willing to overlook threats that destabilize their regions in favour of transactional diplomacy. For countries like Brazil and South Africa, which have dealt with their own home-grown security challenges, there is growing realization that impunity for terrorism anywhere poses risks everywhere.

India’s persistent framing of Pakistan’s terror infrastructure not as a bilateral grievance but as a global security issue seems to be gaining traction. New Delhi’s argument is simple: if terrorism financed, trained, and directed from across borders is tolerated in Kashmir, it sets a precedent that could embolden similar actors in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Reframing the Global South

The BRICS+ condemnation also highlights a deeper shift in Global South’s readiness to define its own red lines rather than outsourcing them to the geopolitical West. For decades, countries like India have been expected to toe the line of major powers when it came to defining security threats, be it in the West Asia, Central Asia, or elsewhere. But now, the Global South is building a consensus that its security interests are not derivative, rather they are primary. This is especially true when those interests are undermined by state-sponsored extremism operating under the guise of ideology, liberation, or regional grievance.

In this context, the silence or equivocation of certain powers on acts of terrorism, particularly those with clear cross-border linkages, can no longer be justified. The BRICS+ condemnation of the Pahalgam attack represents a break from the era of wilful ambiguity. It sets a bar of accountability for all states, regardless of their strategic alignments.

The Way Ahead

For Pakistan, this emerging scrutiny from fellow members of the Global South should lead to prompt introspection. Its longstanding strategy of cultivating asymmetric warfare through non-state actors has not only destabilized its neighbourhood but it has become its Achilles’ heel with several of its patronised terrorist groups redirecting their violence against Pakistan.

The evolving alignments and re-alignments at the global level signify that the world is no longer willing to excuse terrorism when it arrives wearing different uniforms. Nor is it buying the notion that development partnerships can offset or obscure the costs of cross-border violence.

India’s diplomatic pivot, wherein it complements force with diplomatic forums, is reshaping how terrorism should be debated and condemned in global settings. In this light, the BRICS+ statement in Rio is not just a victory for Indian diplomacy, but it also signals that the world’s emerging powers are ready to call terrorism by its name without considering who sponsors it.

Pak Continues to Use Terrorism as its State Policy

In a region long afflicted by insurgency and instability, Pakistan’s military establishment has emerged not merely as a participant, but as a principal architect in the deliberate orchestration and international projection of terrorism. Far from being a collateral consequence of geopolitical upheaval, Pakistan’s facilitation of terrorism is a calculated, institutionalised component of its strategic doctrine—an enduring pillar of statecraft. From sheltering global jihadist organisations to now allegedly utilising ISIS to target both the Afghan Taliban and Baloch rebels, Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex has evolved proxy warfare into a systemic geopolitical instrument. Recent intelligence assessments from Afghan and Western security officials highlight a deeply unsettling trend: factions within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are reportedly enabling elements of the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) to undermine the Taliban regime. Since the Taliban’s reassertion of power in 2021, relations with Islamabad have deteriorated—primarily over disputes concerning the Durand Line and the Taliban’s sheltering of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) operatives. In response, Pakistan appears to be recalibrating its approach—weaponising ISIS-K to destabilise Taliban rule and re-establish influence in Kabul.

This is not a product of conjecture. A series of ISIS-K attacks against Taliban figures and Afghanistan’s Shia minorities have reportedly been linked to training centres and safe zones within Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces. Afghan intelligence authorities have consistently accused the ISI of facilitating the logistical operations of ISIS-K, enabling cross-border movements, and covertly supporting actors opposed to Taliban authority. The Taliban government itself has issued public statements alleging that ISIS operatives infiltrating their territory do so with the backing of foreign intelligence agencies—an implicit reference to Pakistan. Simultaneously, Balochistan remains engulfed in a protracted and brutal conflict. The Baloch rebellion, driven by long-standing economic marginalisation and violent repression, has intensified in recent years. Yet, rather than addressing these deep-rooted grievances, the Pakistani military has responded with increased militarisation and a particularly disturbing tactic: deploying jihadist groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and militants linked to ISIS, against secular Baloch nationalist leaders. In numerous instances, Baloch activists and combatants have been assassinated or abducted by groups publicly aligned with ISIS, only for subsequent intelligence to expose their connections to ISI operatives through intercepted communications and insider testimonies.

The manipulation is systematic. By deploying jihadist proxies, the Pakistani military achieves plausible deniability, evades international censure, and delegitimises the Baloch movement by associating it with religious extremism. This strategy is not novel—it is an extension of a doctrine that has been honed for over forty years. During the 1980s, Pakistan’s military and the ISI constructed a vast proxy network of extremist groups to project influence, acquire strategic depth, and suppress domestic dissent. The U.S.-backed jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan served as the prototype. Billions in American and Saudi funds were channelled through the ISI to support mujahideen fighters—many of whom later evolved into the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This infrastructure did not dissipate with the end of the Cold War; it was repurposed. In Indian-administered Kashmir, the ISI actively cultivated groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), responsible for some of the most egregious terrorist incidents in India, including the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai massacre. Hafiz Saeed, founder of LeT and designated a global terrorist by the UN and the U.S., has operated openly within Pakistan for years, organising mass rallies and running charitable fronts that double as recruitment hubs. The scale of this state-terrorism nexus is staggering. A 2023 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) report observed that Pakistan still harbours more than 40 UN-designated terrorist entities, many of which continue to enjoy unimpeded movement, fundraising capacity, and operational latitude. Islamabad has made surface-level arrests and account freezes to avoid sanctions, yet its deeper strategic sponsorship remains untouched.

This duality—supporting terrorism while simultaneously portraying itself as a victim—has become Pakistan’s geopolitical hallmark. Domestically, Islamist groups are weaponised to suppress dissenting journalists, intellectuals, and minority communities. On the international stage, terrorism is wielded as a tool of state influence. Whether confronting the Taliban in Kabul, fomenting unrest in Kashmir, or directing ISIS-linked operations in Balochistan, the ISI’s unseen influence is a constant. Global counterterrorism efforts have failed to dismantle this duplicity. Osama bin Laden’s presence mere kilometres from Pakistan’s premier military academy in Abbottabad starkly revealed Islamabad’s lack of sincerity in combating terrorism. This pattern persists, evident in the state’s bifurcation between “bad terrorists” (who attack Pakistan) and “good terrorists” (who serve strategic interests).

What renders this strategy especially perilous in 2025 is the shifting geopolitical landscape. With China deepening its regional engagement via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Beijing is increasingly alarmed by the instability in Balochistan. Yet, rather than curtail militant violence, Pakistan’s military has escalated its reliance on extremist proxies to suppress opposition and secure Chinese investments—transforming CPEC into a corridor shadowed by systemic violence. The global community must cease its indulgence of Pakistan’s duplicitous stance on terrorism. The military’s entrenchment of terror as a tool of foreign and domestic policy has rendered South Asia a continual theatre of conflict, with reverberations reaching as far as Europe and North America. Continued Western support—whether in the form of aid, weaponry, or diplomatic concessions—only serves to embolden Pakistan’s militarised deep state.

Pakistan is not a casualty of terrorism—it is among its principal architects. Unless the international community acknowledges this reality and responds with decisive measures—targeted sanctions, terror designations, and a withdrawal of support—the region will remain hostage to a military that thrives in ambiguity, playing a lethal double game at immense human cost.