The last week of July 2025 has seen three significant developments in the world of counterterrorism. In Kashmir, the Indian army neutralised three Pakistani terrorists, including Suleiman Hashim Musa, the mastermind behind the Pahalgam attack. In a parallel development, a UNSC report explicitly stated that the TRF could not have executed the Pahalgam terror attack without support from LeT. The third and most sensitive development was the NIA court’s acquittal of Col Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya, and Kulkarni in the Malegaon blast case, following years of torture, harassment, and humiliation in a fabricated, politically motivated, and botched-up investigation.

In the past four decades, cross-border terrorism has been at the core of India’s security challenges. It began with Khalistan and Kashmir terrorism in the late 70s. At that time, India, complacent about its superiority over Pakistan in conventional warfare, confronted terrorism in Punjab, Kashmir, and the North East. Over these four decades, India has faced the worst and most brutal forms of terrorism, including abductions, hijackings, massacres, minority killings, murders, IED attacks, suicide bombings, and fidayeen attacks. The horrors of Chattisinghpora, Nandimarg, the Parliament attack, bomb blasts in Mumbai, Jaipur, Delhi, Bangalore, and Coimbatore, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the Pulwama Fidayeen attack, and the recent Pahalgam attack have bruised India’s morale, communal harmony, and stability multiple times. However, India never succumbed to terrorists. It always demonstrated a firm resolve in its fight against terror, even when the West, preoccupied with the spectre of communism, ignored the expansion of Jihadism globally.

Left without allies in 1990 after the Soviet Union’s disintegration and a collapsing economy, India faced deadly terrorist movements in Kashmir, Punjab, and the North-East. Pakistan, the primary supporter of cross-border terrorism in India, was favoured by the West. In the 1980s, GHQ Rawalpindi carried out covert operations for the CIA. ISI veterans like Col Imam and Gen Hamid Gul trained Deobandi jihadists from Afghanistan and Pakistan for a prolonged proxy war in Afghanistan. In return, Washington provided Pakistan with billions of dollars in aid and military support, which Pakistan diverted to finance terrorist activities in J&K.

Fueled by drug money and US backing, Pakistan pursued nuclear ambitions. By the early 1990s, Pakistan was fast closing the nuclear gap with India. India was in a difficult position. With the rise of the Taliban, India lost Afghanistan, another key neighbour and ally. Strategically, Afghanistan’s loss was a major setback to India’s national security. Under the overarching Pakistani umbrella, the jihadist takeover of Pakistan led to the emergence of numerous terrorist groups, terror training camps, drug smuggling networks, infiltration routes, crime syndicates, and illegal weapons markets. Consequently, an array of........

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