India, July 22 -- Countering terrorism in 2025 is anchored in geopolitics, which offers both opportunities and challenges. The recent decision by the US State Department to place The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in its list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) is an observable moment in the New Delhi-Washington trajectory. TRF had claimed responsibility for the horrific Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people were killed. India responded with Operation Sindoor, a military operation targeting terror camps and infrastructure deep inside Pakistani territory, leading to the most significant conflict since the 1999 Kargil war. Since then, US President Donald Trump has claimed that he mediated a ceasefire between the two countries. India has steadfastly maintained it agreed to a thaw only after Islamabad reached out. TRF is the latest manifestation of Pakistan's long quest to promote cross-border terrorism as state policy. For a long time, it has been LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) which have been at the forefront of these efforts. TRF was formed at the end of 2019, mostly as a reaction to India's decision to abrogate Article 370 that gave Kashmir a special status. Another similar entity, the People's Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF), also reared its head in the Kashmir Valley around the same time. Both use non-Islamic terminologies in their name, unlike LeT and JeM, making them more ideologically attached to the idea of nationalistic and patriotic resistance than a theology-centric one. Their design prioritises land along with religion. The two groups want to position themselves domestically to rally potential young recruits against the government's policies, prioritising development of a localised ecosystem rather than the cross-border ones promoted over the decades. In 2021, after the Taliban retook Kabul, TRF released propaganda videos and photographs showing their training camps and western-made weapons such as M4 and M16 rifles. Former Army chief, General MM Naravane, had labelled TRF as the "Terror Revival Front". The US designation, despite its potential limited real-world impact, is a setback for Pakistan. The visit to Washington by the country's all-powerful army chief Asim Munir was detrimental to India's push to isolate and corner Rawalpindi on the international stage. Trump seemingly had other plans as he continued to stake claim of bringing a ceasefire between the two nuclear powers. This would have no doubt raised the temperature in New Delhi. However, challenging Trump directly on this issue would have been self-defeating. Slowly gnawing into his inner circle to make sure the correct people hear of and act on India's concerns regarding TRF, PAFF, and others may, in fact, have worked efficiently. Countering terrorism remains a core security deliverable for the US, but the post 9/11 architecture of dealing with the issue as a premier global crisis has changed. This must be factored into India's approach moving forward. Over the past five years, compromise and political brinkmanship has been prioritised over trying to militarily defeat terror organisations. The US cut a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2020. In Syria, former al Qaeda leader Ahmed Al Sharaa of Hay'at Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) took power in Damascus after the fall of Bashar Al Assad. This too, was accepted, if not directly promoted, by western powers. Mediation and politicking are the new game. One way to highlight TRF as a core concern in the US could have been to showcase its design being like that of Hamas, a group that today truly captures the imagination of American political structures these days. While TRF and Hamas, in structure, practice, and construct, are distinctly different, the former, since its attack against Israel in October 2023 and the ensuing Israeli war in Gaza, has enjoyed a narrative top-spin, where it has been rebranded as a 'resistance' in many chambers of public opinion. Pakistan's visceral reaction against TRF terror listing is a rare victory for India considering it has historically had a lonely journey to market Pakistan's promotion of its terror agendas. For India and the US, this listing could also be part of a larger development of bilateral ties under the Trump administration, which in nature is transactional and built around short-term gains. As both States are in the final stages of a much-anticipated trade deal, the TRF listing could well be part of a quid pro quo, where Trump may have gained some leverage on the trade and tariffs front in exchange for a core security deliverable. In this fractured world of countering terror, it is now up to India to carry the momentum from Washington to other multilateral and bilateral platforms....