April 22 marks the first anniversary of Pahalgam massacre in Kashmir, where gunmen struck tourists, killing 26 people in one of the deadliest attacks on civilians, which marked another grim milestone in the region’s long history of bloodshed. Survivors and officials said the attackers singled out victims after identifying them based on their religion as being Hindu, separated them, and then opened fire.
The Resistance Front, or TRF, a proxy and offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack. In the aftermath, Indian authorities identified three suspects, including two Pakistani nationals. By July 2025, the United States formally designated TRF as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, saying it’s a move to “enforce President Trump’s call for justice for the Pahalgam attack.”
But apart from remembering the victims this horrendous attack left, the anniversary of Pahalgam is also about remembering what the massacre revealed once again: that Pakistan’s long use of jihadist proxies in the region, particularly against India, is not a thing of the past, nor a tired accusation repeated out of habit. It’s repeatedly happening, and the world now sees it too.
According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service in March 2026, Pakistan has been identified as a “base of operations and/or target for numerous armed, nonstate militant groups,” some of which have existed since the 1980s. The report lists Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed among the India- and Kashmir-oriented groups operating from Pakistani soil. Some of these groups have also turned inward, harming Pakistan itself – a reality reflected in the Global Terrorism Index 2026 which ranks Pakistan as the country most affected by terrorism in the world, and which often gives Pakistan the opportunity to live inside a double narrative: presenting itself internationally as a victim of terrorism while tolerating, protecting, differentiating, or strategically overlooking those militant infrastructures that serve its regional aims, especially in Kashmir.
The Pahalgam attack, and many attacks before it, should have buried that ambiguity, but too often, the world still prefers euphemism over clarity when it comes to Pakistan’s environment for global terrorism. The group that claimed responsibility for the massacre was not some mysterious outfit operating in a vacuum. TRF itself has been more directly and consistently described in public reporting as a proxy and offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, created as Pakistan faced international pressure to distance itself from terrorism in Kashmir, underscoring how Pakistan’s wider militant ecosystem continues to generate new fronts under new names for the same cause.
The Pakistani-linked extremist networks, facilitators, and militants are not limited to South Asia; they continue to surface well beyond the subcontinent, revealing that the extremist footprint linked to Pakistan is not confined to the region. On March 6, 2026, a federal jury in New York convicted Asif Merchant, a Pakistani man, of murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism in a plot targeting US political figures, including US President Trump, in response to the US killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader. On April 8, 2026, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a 21-year-old Pakistani national, pleaded guilty in connection with an ISIS-inspired plan to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn. In August 2025, South Korean police arrested a Pakistani national accused of being a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba and of entering the country illegally, marking the first time a member accused of being a part of a United Nations-designated terrorist organization has been detained and charged in the country.
From what it looks like, these groups are not retreating, and instead, they are adopting new methods. For instance, with advances in technology, the old image of terror financing as only involving cash couriers and hawala is no longer sufficient. In its July 2025 update on terrorist financing risks, the Financial Action Task Force warned that terrorists continue to exploit digital tools, including e-wallets, virtual assets, online fundraising, and newer payment ecosystems, showing that these groups, which have long operated there, are not frozen in time. They evolve, rebrand, exploit new technologies, and modernize their logistics. Similarly, based on open-source reporting in late 2025 and early 2026, there are renewed experiments inside Pakistan-based jihadist circles, including Jaish-e-Mohammed’s reported women’s wing, Jamaat-ul-Mominaat, and Lashkar-e-Taiba’s apparent expansion of maritime or “water force” training.
This wider pattern also helps explain the significance of Pahalgam itself. What makes this all the more significant is the timing. The attack did not happen in a vacuum, and it did not happen at a moment of complete political paralysis in Kashmir. It came at a time when the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir was witnessing visible growth in elections, tourism, and economic activity. In 2024, there was an overall 63.88% turnout in the J&K Assembly Elections, the first such regional polls in a decade, while official data also showed tourist inflow rising to more than 23.5 million visits, up from more than 20.6 million in 2023. Whatever one’s broader political reading of Kashmir may be, it is difficult to ignore the recent peaceful electoral participation, development works, and growing tourism that directly undermine the logic of those who want the region trapped forever in fear, isolation, and instability.
On the contrary, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, political rights are restricted in practice and civil liberties are regularly squeezed when public anger spills into the streets. In May 2024, protests over inflation, wheat prices, and electricity tariffs left four people dead and more than 100 injured before Islamabad rushed in with a 24 billion rupee emergency grant. When protests erupted again in late September and early October 2025 over poor public services and manipulation of political representation, at least eight people were killed in four days, phone and internet links were cut, and businesses, schools, and transport were shut down across large parts of the territory. The protesters’ demands were simply affordable electricity and flour, medicines in hospitals, and functioning health and education services.
That is precisely why Pahalgam became a target. Pahalgam was not only an attack on tourists. It was also an attack on the idea that Kashmir can move, however unevenly, toward stability. By that attack, they wanted to send a message to tourists not to return, to investors not to trust the region, and to ordinary people not to believe that daily life can move toward normalcy. It was meant to punish ordinary people for participating in public life and to remind them that violence can be reinserted at will. Pakistan’s security establishment has long understood that a quieter, more politically active, more economically connected Kashmir weakens the emotional and strategic utility of the conflict it has cultivated for decades, while at the same time ensuring that making Indian-administered Kashmir appear fragile and unsafe helps conceal the failures and fragilities of Pakistan’s own rule in the part of Kashmir it administers.
The anniversary of Pahalgam, then, should remind us that Pakistan’s use of nonstate actors in the region is not a misunderstanding, and should not be ignored anymore in the name of regional sensitivities. It is part of a durable security doctrine that has repeatedly bled into international terrorism, sectarian violence, proxy warfare, and transnational radicalization.
A year after Pahalgam, the real question is not whether the world has enough evidence to worry. It does. The real question is why so many still prefer euphemism. Twenty-six civilians were slaughtered in a meadow because Pakistan and its backed militancy still believe they can dictate Kashmir’s future through terror. The reason this belief has survived for decades is that the infrastructure behind it has never been held accountable with the seriousness it deserves. To respect the victims and their families, Pahalgam’s anniversary should not be observed with plain condemnation alone; instead, it should be a time to think about what caused this, why it happened, and why the world must stop ignoring Pakistan’s terror ecosystem.
Natiq Malikzada is a journalist and human rights advocate. He holds an MA in International Relations and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex.
This op-ed reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Amu TV.
