Opinion | Pakistan Army: Staying Relevant for Terrorism

The Pakistan Army has remained not only an army but also a shadow government driving the country’s politics, dictating its foreign policy, and ruling its economy. But beneath the myth of national security hides a dark agenda: remaining powerful by exporting terrorism. From bloodstained India by proxy wars in Kashmir to giving refuge to global terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, the Pakistan Army has cultivated a legacy of not national service, but violence.

As Pakistan struggles with increasing terrorism within its own borders, it continues to nurture and support extremist organizations on the other side of its borders. For India, this is not merely a geopolitical concern; it is a national security nightmare. The 2025 Pahalgam massacre by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists is the latest chapter in a long and bloody doctrine in which conflict is manufactured to advance military interests. This incident reveals how the Pakistan Army has militarized terrorism to be the strongest institution in the nation ignoring global criticism, local anger, and rising tensions in the region.

Since its inception, Pakistan’s military has attempted to reverse India’s regional hegemony through a policy of “strategic depth” utilizing terrorism and proxy warfare to further its interests. The concept was straightforward, to keep India occupied with war at its borders, most notably in Kashmir.

In the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan conflict, when Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, organized the armed fighters to battle Soviet troops but what began as a regional defense mission quickly escalated into something much darker, the development of terrorist cells that would be instruments of Pakistan’s foreign policy, not merely in Afghanistan but India as well. Organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and others became the army’s most trusted “assets,” conducting terror in Kashmir and throughout Indian Territory.

This strategy wasn’t coincidence it was purposeful. Supporting these forces made Pakistan keep the Pakistan Army the leading institution within the country, to justify its costly defense expenditures and hold on political power by concentrating the minds of the masses upon the “outside enemy” and not on domestic issues within the nation.

Pakistan’s strongest advantage against India has always been Kashmir. The role of the Pakistan Army in the Kashmir insurgency has been open. Terrorist organizations, such as LeT and JeM, have been the cause of death for thousands of Indian troops and civilians in the region, and their activities continue with the support of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment.

In 2001, a group of Pakistan-trained militants attacked the Indian Parliament, coming close to initiating full-scale war between India and Pakistan. In 2008, the world witnessed horror when Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists launched the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 individuals, including foreigners. The attackers were Pakistani-trained, and their operations were obviously directed by handlers in Pakistan. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the link between the attack and Pakistan, the government’s reluctance to act against the perpetrators betrays the underlying, institutionalized patronage of terror.

Recently a deadly attack in Pahalgam, carried out by The Resistance Front (TRF) a Pakistan-affiliated group killed 26 innocent Hindu civilians. This attack, though tragic, is just another instance of Pakistan’s policy of destabilizing India by employing terror as a weapon. This was no random act of violence; this was a carefully planned assault, intended to provoke tensions in a region that is already explosive.

The attack further increased tensions between the two nations, with India expelling Pakistani diplomats, suspending trade, and increasing military vigilance along the Line of Control. For India, it served to remind that Pakistan’s military establishment is not only interested in dominating its own people but is also willing to export instability to its neighbors as a way of holding on to power.

As the Pakistan Army remains engaged in propagating terrorism overseas, it is now increasingly getting blowback domestically. Terrorism within Pakistan has escalated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant organizations attacking military establishments and civilian targets. A terrorist attack on the Bannu Cantonment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2024 reflected how Pakistan’s policy of patronizing terror networks has come full circle, posing danger to the very institution that bred them.

Pakistan’s leadership has consistently denied its complicity in terrorism. In 2018, The Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif admitted Pakistan’s complicity in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a shocking admission of involvement. In 2019, Prime Minister Imran Khan conceded that there were 30,000 to 40,000 terrorists working in Pakistan, a fact that his former leaders had kept hidden from the world.

In an eye-opening statement, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif admitted that the nation had aided terror groups for over three decades, a confession which clearly implicates the Pakistan Army as a source of state terrorism. This infrequent admission seals what India and the global community have long realized: Pakistan’s military is not only a victim of terrorism but its creator of most of it.

The Pakistan Army’s ongoing role in terrorism is not merely a regional security concern, it is a survival issue. By employing terrorism to maintain Kashmir in a state of unrest and to destabilize India, Pakistan’s military guarantees its own relevance in a nation plagued by internal instability and economic woes. The Pakistan Army’s power depends on maintaining tensions with India, perpetuating the myth of an “external enemy” to legitimize its position in Pakistani society.

Until Pakistan disassembles the terror infrastructure it has nurtured, there can be no peace. The fight is evident: to protect its citizens and its sovereignty, it must keep on revealing the Pakistan Army’s involvement in backing terrorism, while defending its borders against the perpetual threat it faces.

Ultimately, it’s not the military that has to reform itself in Pakistan; it’s an entire country that has to overcome the cycle of fear, brutality, and exploitation that has led to the domination by the army for too many years.

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