With public outrage mounting over Pakistan’s proxy terrorists killing 26 civilians at Pahalgam in Kashmir, Operation Sindoor was carried out successfully by Indian armed forces in a pre-dawn calibrated strike on terror infrastructure in Pakistan.
On 22 April, a terrorist assault in Kashmir deeply impacted India, marking the first significant breach in the region since New Delhi’s abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. In Baisaran, near Pahalgam—a renowned tourist destination in Kashmir—five armed terrorists brazenly opened fire on tourists, resulting in 26 casualties.
Initially, Islamabad dismissed New Delhi’s allegations, branding the terror incident a “false flag operation” by India and implementing reciprocal diplomatic actions.
The Resistance Front, a covert terrorist faction linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), initially claimed responsibility for the attack before retracting the statement, citing a “coordinated cyber intrusion”. Nonetheless, New Delhi responded swiftly—suspending the Indus Water Treaty, sealing the Attari land border, recalling Indian advisors from Islamabad, reducing the diplomatic staff at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, and mandating all Pakistani passport holders to depart India by 1 May—measures clearly intended to downgrade diplomatic relations with Pakistan.
Initially, Islamabad dismissed New Delhi’s allegations, branding the terror incident a “false flag operation” by India and implementing reciprocal diplomatic actions. However, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s candid admission of his country’s past role in “supporting, training and funding” terrorist groups, in effect doing the West’s “dirty work” over three decades, an action he now concedes was erroneous, came just days after the Pahalgam attack. This admission reaffirmed India’s long-standing concern regarding cross-border terrorism allegedly fostered by its neighbour. Thus, it is now crucial to confront the underlying issue—Pakistan’s nexus with terrorism.
The roots of Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups can be traced to the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India, a move Islamabad contests by asserting a claim of ‘historical ownership’. The first Indo-Pakistani War (1947–48), which concluded with a United Nations-mediated ceasefire, resulted in the division of Kashmir, with a portion under Pakistan’s unlawful occupation (termed by India as Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK)). Since this occupation—referred to by Pakistan as ‘Azad Kashmir’—POK has served as a launchpad for cross-border terrorism. With the backing of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s military and intelligence apparatus, terrorist entities such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) have perpetrated sporadic attacks within India’s Jammu and Kashmir region, including the Chittisinghpura Massacre (2000); the Uri attack (2016), the Amarnath pilgrim attack (2017), and the Pulwama attack (2019).
Pakistan’s reluctance to cooperate with India—for example, repeatedly granting bail to high-profile terrorists like Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi while ignoring India’s consistent calls for action—underscores its complicity in the terror nexus.
The 2001 Indian Parliament assault and the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, orchestrated by JeM and LeT respectively, revealed two critical insights—first, that the Pakistan-based terror infrastructure aims beyond Jammu and Kashmir to undermine India’s broader stability; and second, the identification of David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian, as chief architects highlighted LeT’s international terror reach. India has persistently raised the issue of Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism on global platforms, seeking to hold Islamabad accountable as a “rogue state” posing a threat to international security. Yet Pakistan continues to deny all allegations, despite mounting evidence. Its reluctance to cooperate with India—for example, repeatedly granting bail to high-profile terrorists like Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi while ignoring India’s consistent calls for action—underscores its complicity in the terror nexus.
Pakistan has been a sanctuary for terrorism not solely to provoke cross-border unrest in India, but also in Afghanistan, its other neighbouring state. Terrorist groups such as the Haqqani network have utilised Pakistani territory—often with logistical assistance from Islamabad—to conduct terrorist activities within Afghanistan. It is significant to highlight that the Haqqani network, in addition to its strong affiliations with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, also shares connections with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and with groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), whose militant campaigns have predominantly targeted Jammu and Kashmir. Attacks such as the Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul (2008), the coordinated Kabul attacks (2011), the Intercontinental Hotel assault (2011), and the Paktiya truck bomb plot (2013) led to the designation of the Haqqani network as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the United States in 2012.
Pakistan’s involvement in state-sponsored terrorism previously led to its inclusion on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ‘grey list’ in 2018, a designation it retained for four years. The recent terror incident in Pahalgam and its apparent connection to Pakistan’s entrenched terror infrastructure thus underscores a critical concern—Islamabad’s ongoing complicity in offering sanctuary to terrorist groups whose primary operations destabilise neighbouring regions. If left unaddressed, this could escalate into a broader geopolitical security crisis across the surrounding area.
