A leopard never changes its spots. Nowhere is this truer than in Pakistan – a state perpetually on financial life support, and yet always capable of funding terror against India. This paradox should no longer surprise us. What should alarm us instead is the source of that funding: Pakistan’s military-industrial complex, the real jugular India must now target.

The terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir on April 22 shook the nation. The Resistance Front, a proxy for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, initially claimed responsibility – only to later withdraw, blaming a so-called cyber breach. Just days before the assault, Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir – an ex-ISI man – had declared that Kashmir remains their “jugular vein", and went on to say that Hindus were inherently different from them. This was a deliberate attempt to revive the Kashmir conflict and reignite the larger India-Pakistan faultline.

The Pakistani military, hand-in-glove with the ISI, has long harboured terror outfits as strategic tools. This time, drawing from the Hamas playbook, terrorists targeted innocent civilians – identified by religion. It was clearly designed to provoke a fierce Indian response.

For General Munir, this serves multiple purposes: It disrupts Jammu and Kashmir’s political and economic progress, seeks to ignite religious tensions within India, and edges Pakistan toward a war footing – allowing him to consolidate power and rally a deeply divided nation. And Munir desperately needs that. His authority is crumbling.

Baloch rebels are giving the Pakistan army a bloody nose, the Tehreek-e-Taliban is crushing them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh is going through political unrest of its own, apart from the........

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