Soon after the Partition of India, Pakistan’s Jammu and Kashmir policy was based on two agendas: violence on the ground and victimhood abroad. The first act was not diplomacy; it was an armed intrusion. Bharat’s complaint to the UN Security Council recorded the infiltration of armed militias from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) under Operation Gulmarg, led by General Kiani and Major General Akbar Khan, into western Jammu in September 1947. This was followed by a major raid on October 24, 1947 into Kashmir, during which these militias sacked the districts of Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and Kotli before advancing towards Srinagar. That was Pakistan’s original template: create a crisis through force, then internationalise it as a political grievance.
For decades, Pakistan has tried to present Kashmir to the world as a question of self-determination. Its official mission to the United Nations describes Kashmir, along with Palestine, as one of the oldest unresolved international conflicts, while the National Assembly of Pakistan (NAP) argues that the Shimla Agreement (July 1972) does not prevent Pakistan from raising the Kashmir issue at the United Nations (UN). But behind this diplomatic language lies a darker infrastructure of proxy war. The US National Counterterrorism Center describes Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as one of the largest Kashmir-focused terrorist organisations and states that it has carried out attacks against Bharatiya security forces and civilian targets since 1993, including high-profile attacks inside Bharat. The UN Security Council also identifies LeT as a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation.
This is the hypocrisy at the heart of Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. In Geneva, New York, London and other international forums, Pakistan spoke the language of rights. In the mountains, towns and villages of Jammu and Kashmir, it enabled the language of the gun. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented several attacks and abuses by terrorist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, many believed to be trained in Pakistan, and noted that these terror groups, crossing from Pakistan, kidnapped and killed civil servants, suspected informers and civilians. HRW also urged Pakistan to end its support for terrorist outfits in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Collapse Of Narrative
The result was not liberation. It was devastation. Thousands of families in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as across the rest of Bharat, paid the price for Pakistan’s strategic obsession. A generation grew up under the shadow of infiltration, targeted killings, radicalisation, forced displacement and fear. Pakistan did not bring freedom to Kashmir. It exported instability, then used the suffering it helped create as diplomatic ammunition.
The irony becomes even sharper when one looks at Pakistan’s own conduct in the territories and communities it claims to defend. In Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan, HRW found that Islamabad, the Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) exercised control over political life, restricted political pluralism, suppressed freedom of expression and persecuted those who questioned the Pakistani establishment. HRW’s conclusion was blunt: although “Azad” means free, the residents were anything but free.
This is why Pakistan’s Kashmir narrative is collapsing under its own contradictions. The same state that shouted “azaadi” for Jammu and Kashmir criminalised real dissent in PoJK. The same establishment that claimed to speak for Kashmiris allowed terror outfits to operate while Kashmiri nationalists faced intimidation. The same army that accused Bharat of suppressing Kashmir maintained its own coercive grip across PoJK and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The pattern is not limited to Kashmir. In Balochistan, HRW has reported enforced disappearances by Pakistan’s military, intelligence agencies and the Frontier Corps. In 2024, HRW again urged the Pakistani authorities to respect rights during Baloch protests and release peaceful protesters. Among the Pashtuns, Amnesty International condemned Pakistan’s ban on the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), led by Manzoor Pashteen, and called the use of anti-terror laws against peaceful minority activists an attack on the freedom of association and assembly.
This exposes the core design of the Pakistani state. It internationalises grievance abroad and securitises grievance at home. When Kashmiris across the Line of Control (LoC) ask for rights, Pakistan claims moral ownership. When people in PoJK, Balochistan or Pashtun areas ask for dignity, accountability and freedom from military coercion, the same state responds with bans, force, enforced disappearances and sedition-style narratives.
This is not new. Pakistan used the same centralising, majoritarian and military-dominated logic against East Pakistan. Scholarly work on Pakistan’s disintegration identifies economic disparity, language conflict, constitutional confusion, military takeover and political exclusion as drivers of the East-West rupture that culminated in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. In other words, Pakistan did not lose East Pakistan because of an Indian conspiracy. It lost East Pakistan because it refused to respect the democratic will, identity and dignity of its own Bengali majority population in 1971.
The Boomerang Effect
Today, the blowback is visible everywhere. The jihadist ecosystem that Pakistan cultivated for strategic depth in Afghanistan and proxy pressure against India has mutated into a security nightmare for Pakistan itself. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) is listed by the UN as a splinter terrorist group of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), with its remnants continuing to launch attacks inside Pakistan. Pakistan’s own conflict data now reflects the cost of this monster. The Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) reported that combat-related deaths in Pakistan rose by 74 per cent in 2025 to 3,413, including 667 security personnel and 580 civilians.
This is the strategic boomerang. The same ideology once used to bleed India, influence Afghanistan and manufacture leverage has returned in the form of TTP, JuA, ISKP and other jihadist threats. The same state that normalised proxies now struggles to distinguish between “good terrorists” and “bad terrorists.” The same establishment that weaponised instability now lives amid the instability it helped create.
Pakistan wanted azaadi as a slogan for Jammu and Kashmir. Today, azaadi echoes from PoJK, Balochistan and Pashtun civil rights movements. Pakistan wanted to internationalise Kashmir. Today, its own internal repression is increasingly visible to the world. Pakistan wanted to keep Bharat bleeding through a thousand cuts. Today, it is bleeding from wounds created by its own strategic culture.
This is not just hypocrisy. It is historical justice unfolding slowly. A state that used religion, terrorism and military coercion as tools of policy is now trapped by all three. Jammu and Kashmir was never Pakistan’s moral cause. It was Pakistan’s strategic cover. After nearly eight decades of deception, the mask is slipping.
