NEW DELHI, April 30 -- Pakistan's track record in sponsoring, sheltering, and exporting terrorism is known globally and it "is one of the most dangerous and destabilising forces in the world'', top government sources told Millennium Post on Wednesday, a week after the deadly terror attack in Pahalgam in South Kashmir in which 26 people - mostly tourists - were killed.
Sources stated that for decades, Pakistan's soil has been used as a launchpad for cross-border terrorism, insurgency, and extremist ideology. Government sources flagged the recent admission of Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan's Defence Minister, who conceded that the country supported terrorist groups for more than three decades and called it a mistake tied to US-led foreign policy decisions.
Sources stated the 2011 US raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, glaringly exposed systemic failures in Pakistan's counterterrorism efforts. Bin Laden had lived undetected for years in a compound near Pakistan's Military Academy, raising suspicions of ISI collusion.
Pakistan's terror connections have been linked to bombings and terror incidents in Moscow, Iran, London, and Bangladesh, sources said. Government sources said India has, like in the past, seen through the Pak game of issuing denials about non-involvement in terror attacks globally. Sources insisted that 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. Sources cited a number of detailed inputs to point toward the Pak role, involvement, and harbouring of global terror connections through its military and intelligence apparatus.
In 2018, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, suggested that the Pakistani government played a role in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008 that were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pak-based Islamist terrorist group.
Former President and Army Chief Pervez Musharraf 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.
From Kabul to the UK and Russia, Pakistan has been exporting terror globally. 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, sources said.
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.
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.
In Iran, the 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 16 January 2024 inside Pakistan's Balochistan province, targeting what it described as Jaish ul-Adl hideouts, sources said.
Iran has regularly accused Pakistan of harbouring and failing to act against Sunni militants who stage attacks across the border.
Sources said 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.
Pakistan's ISI has been accused of funding and training Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a banned Islamist group responsible for the 2016 Gulshan cafe attack in Dhaka in which 20 hostages were 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.
Sources claimed Pakistan funds multiple training camps across its territory and for multiple terror outfits, including the Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was responsible for the attack in J&K's Pulwama in February 2019, in which 40 soldiers were killed.
Sources said that 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 the 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 described jihadi terrorists as Pakistan's "heroes" and even named global terrorists Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Jalaluddin Haqqani among those considered "heroes" by Pakistan.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.