Until Pakistan matches words with actions, its participation in regional counterterror frameworks will remain a facade.

When Pakistan assumed the chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s permanent anti-terror body, the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), last month, the optics were striking: a state sponsor of terrorism now overseeing a regional network tasked with combating it.

The irony is hard to ignore. For Islamabad’s international posture and domestic rhetoric to carry credibility, its territory must no longer serve as a safe haven for groups trained and funded to strike Indian soil. Yet, the evidence suggests this condition remains far from met.

Pakistan’s enduring militant ecosystem aligns closely with the country’s long-standing military doctrine of “bleeding India with a thousand cuts”—a strategy that leverages proxies and covert militants to impose costs on India while avoiding direct conventional conflict. Under this logic, groups like Jaishe-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) serve not merely ideological but strategic purposes. 

If Pakistan is serious about counterterrorism, the persistence of this doctrine is inexplicable. The question remains: why does Islamabad continue to nurture a system that directly contradicts its international obligations and its stated commitment to counterterrorism?

Persistent Militant Ecosystems and Digital Adaptations

Notwithstanding India’s precision strikes on select Pakistani terrorist camps in May 2025, Pakistan’s militant ecosystems remain largely intact. Take the case of Masood Azhar-led JeM, which continues to plan operations, maintain training facilities, and innovate its fundraising mechanisms. Recent investigative reporting reveals that JeM has shifted toward digital-wallet fundraising and is attempting to rebuild as many as 313 terror hubs across Pakistan.

Despite severe losses during Operation Sindoor—which killed more than a dozen members of Azhar’s family and destroyed JeM’s headquarters in Bahawalpur—he remains defiant in his terrorist drive against India.

In a recent speech at a JeM site in Bahawalpur, Azhar announced plans to establish a women’s jihad course, Jamat-ul-Mominat. The 15-day training program reportedly aims to establish female combat units within JeM. If implemented, this can be a critical operational development for JeM, reminiscent of the Islamic State and Boko Haram, both of which have deployed women as suicide bombers and assault operatives.

Further worrying is the public conduct of the sons and successors of designated terror figures. The son of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed, for example, has openly defied extradition calls, using public rallies to proclaim that Pakistan will continue to shield his father while praising military operations and urging “jihad.” 

An anti-regime Pakistani journalist recently reported that Talha Saeed has assumed leadership of an LeT-linked mosque in Lahore—signaling a generational shift in the group’s command and control. These are not isolated cases but part of a broader ecosystem in which religious, militant, and political networks overlap with visible impunity. Their continued prominence underscores the depth of Pakistan’s structural complicity and the normalization of militant influence in public life.

The Digital Evolution of Terror Financing

Pakistan’s counterterrorism narrative further collapses under the scrutiny of its financial oversight. While Islamabad touts its cooperation with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), militant funding has evolved faster than its regulatory mechanisms. Groups such as JeM have reportedly shifted from traditional banking channels to fintech platforms, mobile wallets, and decentralized e-payment systems within Pakistan to sustain operations.

This digital adaptation is not evidence of militant defeat but proof of resilience. Despite a recent implicit warning from FATF President Elisa de Anda Madrazo that Pakistan’s removal from the Grey List in 2022 was not “bullet-proof” and Pakistan’s own finance minister’s admission of rampant unregulated digital transactions, terrorist financing remains largely unchecked. The shift into digital ecosystems allows militant organizations to operate under the radar, with minimal state interference or consequences.

Paradoxical Cover from the United States

Pakistan’s growing diplomatic and economic proximity to the United States may paradoxically weaken Washington’s leverage over Islamabad’s behavior. Historically, U.S. pressure has occasionally forced Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment to rein in militant proxies. But today, the strategic calculus appears to have shifted. 

As Pakistan portrays itself as a “regional counterterror partner” and a reliable economic hub, Washington remains inclined to prioritize a transactional relationship over accountability. These dynamic risks emboldening Pakistan’s military leadership, led by Field Marshal Asim Munir, to maintain its use of jihadist groups as tools of statecraft. Islamabad’s confidence that its strategic importance shields it from meaningful repercussions only deepens the challenge.

The policy risk for India and its partners is that Pakistan will use its SCO-RATS role to deflect scrutiny while continuing asymmetric operations. If training camps are allowed to be rebuilt, if digital funding networks flourish, and if terrorist rallies continue with active state approval, then Pakistan’s leadership in counterterror structures becomes an exercise in hollow symbolism rather than substantive change.

Pakistan’s claim to regional leadership in counterterrorism rests on fragile ground so long as its own territory hosts—and in many cases, protects—the very networks it purports to combat. The U.S.–Pakistan relationship, increasingly transactional and detached from shared security priorities, risks reinforcing Islamabad’s belief that it can pursue dual policies: cooperation abroad and complicity at home. 

Until Pakistan matches words with actions, its participation in regional counterterror frameworks will remain a facade. The question for the international community is not whether Pakistan can change, but whether it wants to.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Pakistan has repeatedly weaponized the idea of “Ummah solidarity”—not as a moral or theological commitment, but as a bargaining chip in global diplomacy. 

Pakistan’s Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has recently triggered global alarm by threatening that if pushed to the brink, Pakistan would “take half the world down,” explicitly naming India. Speaking in the U.S., he also hinted at missile strikes on Indian dams and economic assets, including Mukesh Ambani’s Jamnagar refinery.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned the remarks as “nuclear sabre-rattling” and labelled Pakistan an “irresponsible nuclear state,” vowing not to yield to nuclear blackmail. Officials called it “regrettable” that such threats were made from the soil of a friendly third country.

Such bravado, however, is at odds with Pakistan’s historical pattern of opportunism and duplicity on the global stage — a track record that belies its self-portrayal as a principled actor. 

From its crypto-alliance with the United States during the war in Afghanistan, to betraying Iran by passing intelligence to Washington; from waging a silent war against its own Pashtun population through forced displacement and resource exploitation, to the mass expulsion of Afghan refugees; from its deafening silence on China’s repression of Uyghur Muslims, to suppressing Palestinian factions during Black September in Jordan; from covertly aligning with Israel in the Azerbaijan–Armenia conflict, to backing both Iran and Donald Trump — whom it bizarrely nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — Pakistan’s foreign policy has often been a study in contradictions.

These contradictions reveal a nation untethered to any consistent moral compass or principled foreign policy. Pakistan epitomizes the adage: running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

Pakistan’s Betrayal of Iran

Iranian commentators have long accused Islamabad of pursuing self-interest at Tehran’s expense. Following Pakistan’s June 2025 luncheon with U.S. President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the government even announced its intention to recommend Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize — a surreal move given Trump’s record of hostility toward Iran.

Only two days later, the U.S. launched devastating bunker-buster strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. In a strange diplomatic twist, Pakistan publicly condemned the strikes and expressed “solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” even while maintaining private overtures to Trump.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl), one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, denounced the Nobel move as “morally indefensible.” Party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman blasted it as an insult to victims of American aggression across the Muslim world.

The double-speak reflects a familiar pattern: Islamabad leveraging the “Ummah card” to appease domestic audiences, while pursuing pragmatic deals with Washington. Meanwhile, Iran continues to accuse Pakistan of harboring extremist groups like Jaish al-Adl, which launch deadly attacks on Iranian border guards from sanctuaries in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

Pakistan’s Betrayal of the United States

Pakistan’s duplicity vis-à-vis Washington is not new—it is historical.

During the U.S.-led “War on Terror” after 2001, Pakistan allowed American forces to use its airbases while simultaneously sheltering and supporting jihadist proxies that targeted U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Billions of dollars in American aid poured into Islamabad, yet the ISI covertly facilitated the Taliban and the Haqqani Network.

The most damning episode came in 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was discovered living in Abbottabad, just a short distance from Pakistan’s premier military academy. The U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed him exposed Islamabad’s double game.

Yet, in 2020, then Prime Minister Imran Khan openly called Bin Laden a “martyr” in Pakistan’s parliament. Former U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo both condemned Islamabad’s duplicity. 

Clinton memorably said: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” Pompeo, in his 2023 memoir Never Give an Inch, recounted in detail how Pakistan undermined U.S. operations while pocketing aid.

By 2025, Pakistan had again drawn international ire by forcibly expelling more than a million Afghan refugees, many registered with the UNHCR. UN reports documented widespread abuses against returnees, particularly women and minorities, exposing the emptiness of Pakistan’s claims of “Ummah solidarity.”

Visit to the U.S.: War on Terror or War on Pashtuns?

Munir’s recent U.S. visit must also be understood in light of Pakistan’s decades-long militarization of its Pashtun belt. Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” Islamabad has waged a parallel war against its own Pashtun population, treating the tribal belt as both a buffer zone and an economic colony.

For years, Pakistan has deliberately kept low-intensity conflict simmering in the region to justify military control. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly documented mass arrests, extrajudicial killings, and the denial of due process, pointing to a systemic policy of securitization. 

By engineering insecurity, the state ensures that local communities accept a perpetual military presence and even foreign interference in the name of peace. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has gone further, recording numerous cases in which civilian areas were bombed under the pretext of counterterrorism.

The cost for ordinary Pashtuns has been devastating. Entire villages have been burned, residents uprooted, and people pushed into economic marginalization — a process critics describe as deliberate demographic engineering. 

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), more than five million Pashtuns were displaced during military operations between 2004 and 2016, many of whom remain in limbo without adequate resettlement or compensation.

At the same time, the mineral-rich belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan has become a source of extraction rather than empowerment. Gold, copper, and lithium deposits — vital for the global energy transition — are siphoned off by military-linked conglomerates and foreign partners, while local communities continue to live in poverty. 

Reports from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) note how extractive projects disproportionately benefit military and political elites, leaving indigenous populations excluded from any meaningful share of the wealth.

Munir’s anti-India rhetoric in Washington thus masks a deeper agenda: securing U.S. geopolitical indulgence while sustaining the internal war economy on Pashtun soil.

Selective Outrage: Uyghurs Ignored, Palestinians Betrayed

Pakistan’s “principled” defense of Muslim causes unravels most starkly when examined through its selective outrage. Nowhere is this clearer than in its silence on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims and its contradictory stance on Palestine. Despite Beijing’s demolition of mosques, erasure of Islamic culture, and incarceration of more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang camps, Pakistan’s leadership has never once raised the issue on international platforms. 

When pressed in 2020 on why he vocally condemned India’s actions in Kashmir but remained mute on China’s atrocities in Xinjiang, then Prime Minister Imran Khan candidly admitted: “China has been a great friend… we do talk about things with China privately, not publicly.” The remark underscored that Islamabad’s so-called “Ummah solidarity” is less moral conviction than transactional diplomacy.

The same duplicity marks its approach to Palestine. For decades, Pakistan has claimed to be the staunchest defender of the Palestinian cause, even stamping its passports with the phrase: valid for all countries except Israel. 

Yet its actions tell a different story. During Black September in 1970, Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq, then stationed in Jordan, advised Jordanian forces during their bloody crackdown on Palestinian factions. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians were killed, with more than 25,000 displaced — a massacre rarely acknowledged in Pakistani discourse.

Fast forward to 2020, and Pakistan stood with Turkey in backing Azerbaijan during its war against Armenia, even as Israel supplied Baku with drones and precision munitions. The result was an effective alignment of Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel — a triangular cooperation that starkly contradicted Islamabad’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

What It All Means

Pakistan has repeatedly weaponized the idea of “Ummah solidarity”—not as a moral or theological commitment, but as a bargaining chip in global diplomacy. 

Its foreign policy choices reveal a pattern: alliance with the U.S. while sponsoring its enemies; posturing as Iran’s partner while sheltering anti-Iran militants; waving the Palestinian flag while aiding Israel’s allies; condemning India while staying mute on China’s genocide against Muslims.

This is not a strategy. It is duplicity dressed up as ideology.

Pakistan continues to run with the West while hunting with the Ummah—a game that fools no one and secures nothing lasting.

Pakistan’s pattern of dependence—on U.S. security guarantees, Chinese investment, Iranian goodwill—makes it a client state, not a sovereign actor on the world stage.

Amid the fiery conflict between Israel and Iran, Pakistan’s military finds itself walking a geopolitical tightrope: publicly aligning with Iran, even hinting at nuclear retaliation against Israel, while simultaneously clinging to U.S. military favor in its campaign against Iranian nuclear assets.

This schizophrenic stance underscores a decades‑long pattern: Pakistan’s “deep state” and its military‑intel establishment have repeatedly sold the nation’s sovereignty to whichever patron offers the greatest leverage. The result? An arrested development and chronic underachievement.

Last week, Iran’s IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei claimed on state television that “Pakistan has told us that if Israel uses nuclear missiles, we will also attack it with nuclear weapons”. Pakistan neither publicly confirmed nor denied the claim. Yet within days, its foreign ministry condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan—calling them “gravely concerning” and flagging possible regional escalation.

This denunciation came just after Pakistan endorsed President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize over his de‑escalation efforts with India. In barely a 48‑hour span, Islamabad praised Trump for stabilizing South Asia and then rebuked his bombs.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was in Washington for a lavish White House lunch—where Trump publicly lauded Pakistani restraint after the India‑Pakistan missile flare‑up in May. This whitewashing of Islamabad’s contradictions—welcoming Pakistani nuclear diplomacy while supporting the strikes—reveals much about the transactional nature of this partnership.

Deep State by Design

Pakistan’s military establishment, colloquially “the deep state,” has never seen itself as servant, but rather as master. Since 1947, it has orchestrated coups, mediated foreign policy, and directed economic as well as strategic priorities. Civilian governance remains a veneer. Power accrues through Pakistan’s full‑spectrum nuclear deterrence doctrine—designed less for defense than for bargaining over India, the U.S., and other regional powers.

The economic cost of this grandstanding is steep. Decades of diverting scarce resources into military programs—sometimes backed by Chinese or U.S. aid, sometimes clandestinely through nuclear proliferation networks like A.Q. Khan’s—have starved Pakistan of investment in education, health, infrastructure, and industry. Its economy limps under chronic debt; urban centers are choked; public services are threadbare.

Selling the Nation to the Highest Bidder

This Faustian bargain continues. Pakistan courts the U.S. when it needs military hardware, diplomatic cover, and economic relief. As soon as Washington turns, Islamabad pivots to Iran—or China, or Russia. Recent Indian‑express analysis notes Islamabad’s “delicate balancing act” shaped by anxieties over India and a need for U.S. patronage. But the result is strategic incoherence and international mistrust.

The core of the problem is corruption at the top. The deep state uses its clout to capture resources. Elite groups extract rents from development budgets, shield militant proxies, and arrogate foreign policy. Civil society and democracy exist in name only; real power resides with generals who see the nation as a chessboard. As a result, growth stalls, inequality deepens, and Pakistan’s potential remains unrealized.

The Nuclear Catch‑22

Pakistan’s flirtation with nuclear brinkmanship—hinting at retaliation for Israel, pointing B‑2 bombers at Iran—exposes the inherent contradiction: nukes are for deterrence, not diplomacy. Instead of a mature nuclear strategy aimed at securing peace and economic stability, the military uses nuclear ambiguity for maximum geopolitical returns. That has brought fleeting headlines and foreign funds, but no sustainable development.

Pakistan must ask itself: is it raising its geopolitical profile, or holding itself back through strategic schizophrenia? Its pattern of dependence—on U.S. security guarantees, Chinese investment, Iranian goodwill—makes it a client state, not a sovereign actor on the world stage.

A Way Forward: Decouple the Deep State

For Pakistan to unlock its potential, it must dismantle the deep‑state’s monopoly. Demilitarize foreign policy, entrust civilian leadership with economic and diplomatic agendas. Cut off free rides to jihadi proxies that generate short‑term geopolitical cachet but long‑term global isolation. Redirect resources from nuclear brinkmanship into clean energy, literacy, and healthcare.

Otherwise, Pakistan’s “balancing act” is nothing but a balancing of bids: play the U.S. for aid, Iran for regional rapprochement, China for infrastructure—until the next pivot. But each shift deepens instability and stifles growth. The people, not the generals, suffer.

In the end, only a break from this militarized cycle—an embrace of genuine democracy and domestic investment—can free Pakistan from being the world’s perpetual geopolitical rentier. Anything less is selling its soul, again.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.