The Business of Blood: Rawalpindi’s Double Edge of Terror

There is a fundamental law in geopolitics: when a state adopts terrorism as state policy, it does not acquire strategic leverage; it signs its own death warrant. For half a century, the Pakistani military establishment operated under the delusional arrogance that it could breed venomous snakes in its backyard and expect them to strike only across its borders. Today, that entire infrastructure has boomeranged, turning inward and consuming the very country that built it.

Pakistan loves to project itself as a victim of global turmoil. But history, forensic evidence, and the unvarnished confessions of its own top leaders reveal an entirely different reality. Rawalpindi and the Inter Services Intelligence did not become casualties of terrorism by accident. They engineered, sustained, and monetised it, using proxies externally against their neighbours and weaponizing terror internally against their own citizens.

The Confessions from the Top

Let us bypass diplomatic ambiguity and look directly at what Pakistan’s highest constitutional and military authorities have conceded in moments of unscripted truth.

When Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif sat down for an interview with Sky News, he did not offer deflections. He conceded three decades of state complicity: "Well, we have been doing this dirty work for the United States for three decades. That was a mistake."

Before him, former President and military dictator General Pervez Musharraf admitted on camera that his establishment actively trained and unleashed militants, stating plainly: "The government turned a blind eye because they wanted India to discuss Kashmir." Musharraf went on to openly acknowledge that the intelligence machinery actively utilised groups like Jaish e Mohammed for strategic missions.

Then came three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who admitted to Pakistan's biggest English daily, Dawn, that Pakistani soil was directly used to orchestrate the 2008 Mumbai massacre: "Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we complete the trial?"

And when former Prime Minister Imran Khan addressed the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, he dropped another bombshell about the magnitude of this domestic militia base: "Until we came into power, the governments did not have the political will, because when you talk about militant groups, we still have thirty to forty thousand armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir."

These are not accusations from foreign capitals. These are direct, recorded admissions from Pakistan's own Prime Ministers, Defence Ministers, and Army Chiefs.

The Global Footprint of Rawalpindi’s Proxies

The external cost of this state policy has been catastrophic.

From the 2001 assault on the Indian Parliament to the horrors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, where ten Lashkar e Taiba terrorists slaughtered one hundred and sixty-six civilians under continuous telephone direction from handlers in Pakistan, the trail has always led back to the deep state. The 2016 Uri garrison attack, the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing that claimed forty Indian soldiers, and the Pahalgam terror assault where twenty-six tourists were killed in Baisaran meadow all bore the exact same operational hallmarks, planned and coordinated by Pakistan-based handlers like Sajid Saifullah Jatt.

The footprint extended well across the world. When Admiral Mike Mullen, the former Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he did not mince words. He called the Haqqani Network a "veritable arm of Pakistan’s ISI."

When British investigators probed the 2005 London bombings that killed fifty-two commuters, the perpetrators were traced directly back to terror training hubs in Pakistan’s tribal regions. And when the most hunted terrorist on earth, Osama bin Laden, was finally located, he was living in a fortified mansion in Abbottabad, right within earshot of the Pakistan Military Academy. Pakistan’s own Abbottabad Commission report was forced to document either grotesque institutional incompetence or active high level state complicity.

Yet, globally designated terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar enjoyed state protection, rallies, and access to funding through multi million dollar front charities like Jamaat ud Dawa and Falah e Insaniat, which landed Pakistan repeatedly on the Financial Action Task Force grey list.

The Internal Weapon: Manufacturing Terror to Crush Dissent

The terror nexus is not just an export commodity. Rawalpindi’s most calculated use of extremist proxies is directed at its own citizens.

In Balochistan and Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, peaceful political resistance against forced resource extraction, state brutality, and economic ruin is systematically crushed. When civil groups like the Joint Awami Action Committee take to the streets demanding fundamental economic rights, the military playbook is routine: infiltrate the protests with armed proxy networks, instigate violent chaos, slap the label of terrorism onto the agitation, and send in the Frontier Corps with total impunity.

Human rights watchdogs have exhaustively documented thousands of enforced disappearances, torture cases, and extrajudicial executions through notorious kill and dump operations across Balochistan, executed by paramilitary forces and state sponsored death squads. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, an entirely unarmed, non violent civil campaign, has seen its leadership routinely arrested, demonised, and silenced under the guise of national security.

Inside the mainstream discourse, independent journalism has been suffocated. Any reporter attempting to expose the military's massive corporate footprint or investigate state patronised militias is silenced. Journalists like Matiullah Jan and Asad Ali Toor have faced brazen daytime abductions, physical assaults, and severe prosecution under sweeping cybercrime laws, all while Inter Services Public Relations controls the daily editorial line of national broadcasters.

The Inevitable Strategic Collapse

What happens when an army spends half a century institutionalising extremism instead of building an economy? The entire state crumbles.

The Global Terrorism Index has placed Pakistan at the very top of nations impacted by terrorism, documenting over one thousand internal fatalities and hundreds of strikes in a single calendar year. The very militant groups nurtured by the generals have turned their weapons on the state, transforming Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan into daily combat zones.

The establishment's desperation is on full display. Scrambling F16 jets from Sargodha to deploy laser guided munitions against targets inside its own territory in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while conducting desperate cross border strikes into Afghanistan, is not a demonstration of military competence. It is an undeniable admission of structural failure.

For decades, the Pakistani military establishment portrayed itself as the indispensable guardian of the state. In truth, it has been the principal arsonist. Rawalpindi lit the flames of proxy war for leverage and budget dominance. Today, the smoke has cleared, the economy is hollowed out, and the generals are running out of excuses.