Pakistan’s track record in sponsoring, sheltering, and exporting terrorism is one of the most dangerous and destabilising forces in the world.
For decades, its soil has been used as a launchpad for cross-border terrorism, insurgency, and extremist ideology, and the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack has once again brought the spotlight on the neighbour.
In 2018, the former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, had suggested that the Pakistani government played a role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group.
Even Pervez Musharraf, General and former President of Pakistan, had conceded that his forces trained militant groups to fight India in Kashmir. He confessed that the government turned a blind eye because it wanted to force India to enter into negotiations, as well as raise the issue internationally.
Just a few says ago, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s defence minister, admitted that the country supported terrorist groups for more than three decades, calling it a mistake tied to US-led foreign policy decisions.
In an interview with Sky News journalist Yalda Hakim, where he was asked about the renewed tensions between India and Pakistan following the terrorist attack in J&K’s Pahalgam, Asif said: “Yes, we have been doing this dirty work for America and the West, including Britain, for the last three decades.” During the interview, Asif also bizarrely claimed the Lashkar-e-Taiba doesn’t exist anymore, accusing India of “staging” the Pahalgam terror attack in a “false flag” operation to create a “crisis in the region, particularly for Pakistan”.
Responding to the allegations at the United Nations, India termed Pakistan a “rogue state” that fuels global terrorism and destabilises peace. “It is unfortunate that one particular delegation has chosen to misuse and undermine this forum, to indulge in propaganda, and make baseless allegations against India. The whole world has heard Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif admitting and confessing Pakistan’s history of supporting, training and funding terrorist organisations in a recent television interview,” India said.
EXPORTING TERRORISM GLOBALLY
Afghanistan
• Taliban and Haqqani Network Attacks: Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) has been widely documented as supporting the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, providing them with funding, training, and safe havens.
● These groups have been responsible for numerous deadly attacks on Afghan civilians, government targets, and international forces, including the 2008 Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul and the 2011 attack on the US Embassy in Kabul.
● Senior journalist Carlotta Gall in her book wrote that, “The embassy bombing was no operation by rogue ISI agents acting on their own. It was sanctioned and monitored by the most senior officials in Pakistani intelligence.”
Russia
● Moscow Concert Hall Attack (2024): In April 2025, a Pakistan link emerged in the investigation of the Moscow terror attack. Russian authorities identified the mastermind as a Tajik national and are probing connections to Pakistan, with reports suggesting that the attackers may have had logistical or ideological support tracing back to Pakistani networks.
Iran
● Jaish ul-Adl Attacks: Pakistan-based Sunni extremist group Jaish ul-Adl has repeatedly attacked Iranian security forces in Sistan and Baluchestan province. In response, Iran carried out missile and drone strikes on January 16, 2024, inside Pakistan’s Balochistan province, targeting what it described as Jaish ul-Adl hideouts.
● Cross-Border Militancy: Iran has regularly accused Pakistan of harbouring and failing to act against Sunni militants who stage attacks across the border.
United Kingdom
● 2005 London Bombings: The July 7, 2005, London bombings, carried out by four British Islamist terrorists, were linked to training and indoctrination in Pakistan. Three of the bombers—Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, and Germaine Lindsay—spent time in Pakistan between 2003 and 2005.
Osama bin Laden’s Sanctuary in Abbottabad, Pakistan
The 2011 US raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, exposed systemic failures in Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts. Bin Laden had lived undetected for years in a compound near Pakistan’s Military Academy, raising suspicions of ISI collusion.
Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) Operations
● Pakistan’s ISI has been accused of funding and training Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned Islamist group responsible for the 2016 Gulshan café attack in Dhaka (20 hostages killed). In 2015, Bangladeshi authorities expelled Pakistani diplomats after catching them red-handed transferring funds to JMB operatives.
● A 2020 intelligence report revealed ISI’s involvement in training 40 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar camps through JMB, aiming to infiltrate them into India. JMB’s network, funded via Gulf-based NGOs and Pakistani intermediaries, spans Bangladesh and India, with sleeper cells in states like West Bengal and Kerala. The group’s ties to Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus illustrate Islamabad’s alleged use of transnational proxies to destabilise regional rivals.
Pakistan Sponsored Schools of Terror
● Behind Pakistan’s denials is a stark reality, a military and intelligence network that has turned soldiers into jihadist trainers fuelling decades of terror across South Asia.
● Pakistan hosts a network of terror training camps across provinces like Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly NWFP), Waziristan, and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). These camps, operated by groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), and transnational outfits like ISIS-Khorasan, serve as hubs for radicalisation, weapons training, and suicide mission preparation. Ex-Pakistani Army personnel often assist in training, lending military expertise to enhance operational lethality.
● The US State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2019 identified Pakistan as a country that “continued to serve as a safe haven for certain regionally focused terrorist groups.”
● In a report titled Pakistan Army and Terrorism: An Unholy Alliance, the European Foundation for South Asian Studies highlights a deeply entrenched relationship among Pakistan’s military establishment, its intelligence agency—the ISI—and radical religious leaders.
● In September 2019, Brigadier Shah made a startling admission during a national television interview on Pakistani private news channel Hum News. Speaking to journalist Nadeem Malik during a talk show, Shah confessed that Pakistan had spent millions of rupees on the terror outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) in an effort to mainstream the group.
● In an interview, Musharraf acknowledged that Kashmiris were “trained in Pakistan” as Mujahideen to fight against the Indian Army in Jammu and Kashmir. He went further, describing jihadi terrorists as Pakistan’s “heroes” and even naming global terrorists Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Jalaluddin Haqqani among those considered “heroes” by Pakistan.