Pakistan's ISI continues to back jihadist groups in Kashmir: Report

Islamabad, Oct 9 (IANS) Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has long been involved in cultivating insurgency in the Kashmir region of India by providing support and training to Islamist jihadist groups, a report cited on Thursday.

It added that these terror groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, carry out attacks in Kashmir and other parts of India, giving Pakistan plausible deniability.

"Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment has long been accused of using proxy jihadist groups as tools of its foreign policy. From Kashmir to Afghanistan, Pakistani-backed terrorist groups have waged war in pursuit of Islamabad’s strategic goals. From the first Kashmir war, soon after independence, to the Taliban’s return in Kabul, Pakistan's behaviour has been the same: armed non-state groups are treated as low-cost tools to pressure stronger rivals, avoid direct war, and keep influence in neighbouring countries," a report in Afghan media outlet Amu TV detailed.

“What seems rational to Rawalpindi’s strategists has produced decades of destabilising outcomes for the neighbourhood and even for Pakistan itself. What’s alarming is how little the world has done to change it. The only way to stop it is to make the strategy unaffordable, both politically and financially, and in terms of reputation,” it added.

According to the report, despite formal bans, these groups continued to operate from Pakistan. The 2008 Mumbai massacre, it said, was planned by LeT, exposing the extent of Pakistan’s strategy, with subsequent testimonies indicating that the handlers were in Pakistan and belonged to ISI.

“The cost for such behaviour by any country must be fundamentally raised to the point where continued sponsorship of extremist and terrorist groups hurts more than it helps. Raising the cost can take multiple forms," it stressed.

The reports emphasised that diplomatically states should be openly called out and held accountable for supporting terrorism, with multilateral forums like the United Nations serving to condemn countries that wage proxy wars.

Economically, it said, measures such as sanctions and aid cuts are powerful tools alongside formally designating states as sponsors of terrorism. Financial bodies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) can continue to monitor and pressure countries with such a record until terror financing is effectively curtailed.

“In Pakistan’s case, the clearest lever is to freeze military aid, diplomatic clarity and implement financial pressure and military sanctions until there is verifiable, and sustained action against all terrorist groups, without exceptions or rebranding. This should start with the United States and be echoed by all other countries in the international community,” the report noted.

--IANS

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