22th April 2025 will forever be remembered in India and in Kashmir as the day of a massacre.
The perpetrators are known as “The Resistance Front,” a smaller and lesser-known militant terrorist organization with connections to terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (or Lashkar-e-Tayyiba), one of the largest terrorist organizations in Asia. Lashkar-e-Taiba has conducted many attacks on Indian troops stationed in Kashmir in non-combatant positions and even on civilians. The most prominent are India’s September 11th: the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, otherwise known as 26/11, where 149 civilians, hospital and hotel staff, foreign nationals, and security personnel were killed in a three-day siege of India’s most populous city.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is also known for its connection to the Pakistani central government, especially with the intelligence agency known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States asserts that ISI supports the Taliban in Afghanistan. The ISI treats them like “good jihadis” who fight foreign influence in Afghanistan and wreak havoc on civilians and security personnel in Kashmir. “Bad jihadis” for Islamabad are those who want to disrupt Islamabad, not those who want to kill and maim others, according to the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
These statements are not emotional outbursts without backup. They are the complete opposite: logical facts with universally-recognized evidence. The United States government, a historical patron of Pakistan, was forced to send its military into Peshawar to find and execute Osama bin Laden, a Saudi terrorist who masterminded the September 11th attacks, which killed 2,977 people. In 2010, former Army General and President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf even admitted to training Kashmiri militants, blaming the international community’s “apathy” to the dispute over Kashmir.
The Indian government has responded to the Pahalgam attacks with many measures, indicating the serious tone they are espousing in response to the attack. The Indus Water Treaty for cross-border water sharing has been suspended, all Pakistani military diplomats are being expelled from India, and Pakistanis in India on a visa are being given 48 hours to remove themselves from the nation.
Written by Eshan Korat
