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.

- YASMINAH SHAH

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.