Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2025. © Richard Kemp
US diplomacy has potentially brought India and Pakistan back from the brink of what could easily have turned into a much wider and more violent conflict. For the time being at least – the ceasefire over the weekend, if it holds, is due to be followed up by more substantive negotiations.
On Saturday morning, a couple of hours before Pakistan’s air force launched missiles at Indian military bases, lieutenant general Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the army spokesman, accused India of ‘pushing the whole region towards a dangerous war with its madness’.
In fact it is Pakistan’s madness that is responsible for the most ferocious conflict between the two countries since the war in 1971. India’s air strikes against terrorists were an entirely justified response to the April 22 slaughter of 26 civilians in Pahalgam, the most deadly attack on Indian civilians since the 2008 bomb and gun attacks in Mumbai.
Indian intelligence has linked the Pahalgam shootings to Lashkar-e-Taiba, an internationally proscribed terrorist group. LeT’s primary focus is on violently separating Kashmir from India to use as a base for the eventual conquest of India in order to force Islamic rule on the subcontinent, destroying Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. It also has strong connections with Al Qaeda and has been implicated in global terrorist attacks including in the UK, US and the Middle East. LeT is a proxy of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency which funds and directs it.
Of course Pakistan denies that, claiming only to provide moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiri separatists. But some years ago, when working in British intelligence, I saw numerous reports confirming the ISI’s direct role with LeT and other jihadist groups, and the situation won’t have changed since then. Furthermore, Pakistan’s extensive use of a range of terrorist organisations as instruments of state policy is widely understood and has been admitted by Pakistani leaders.
Even General Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan, publicly confirmed his government’s support for jihadist groups against India in Kashmir. And in an interview on Sky News following the Pahalgam attack, which he absurdly claimed was an Indian false flag operation, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif pretty much confessed that his country had been involved in funding, supporting and training terrorist organisations.
Internationally, the highest profile example of Pakistan’s state sponsorship of terrorism was the refuge given to the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. He was killed by US special forces while hiding out near the military base at Abbottabad. Despite Pakistani denials, he could not have been there without the cooperation of the army and intelligence services. When judging Islamabad’s dismissal of its involvement in Pahalgam and other terrorist attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere, we should bear that in mind.
LeT is just one of several veritable alphabets of at least 15 major terrorist groups throughout Pakistan, many operating as proxies of the government. Some are focused on Kashmir, some on Afghanistan and others on global jihad, including Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Pakistan’s long standing strategy of creating terrorist groups to further its own interests has also backfired on itself and some are now dedicated to the overthrow of the government and the establishment of Sharia law. As a result, Pakistan has suffered the greatest number of terrorist attacks of any country in the last few years. Attempts to bring them under control in the past have led to greater violence.
Even if Trump’s ceasefire holds it will not end the conflict over Kashmir for long. In 1947 Pakistan sent Pashtun tribal fighters into Kashmir to annex the territory which had retained independence but acceded to India the same year. Since then Pakistan has not let up in its determination to destabilise the region and gain control, and it is not going to do so now.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
