The objectives and consequences of Pakistan’s three decades of support for terrorism
Pakistan has long been accused by neighbours, particularly India and Afghanistan, of supporting terrorism. Officials in Islamabad have consistently denied these allegations.
Recently, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Pakistan’s defence minister, implicitly acknowledged that his country supported terrorism for three decades by saying, “We have been doing this dirty work” for the West, in an interview with Sky News after a terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 26 people in a tourist town. This is the most explicit admission by a high-ranking Pakistani official. Subsequently, former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari added, “It’s not a secret that Pakistan has a past as far as extremist groups are concerned.” Both politicians talked about how Pakistan has suffered for its actions. The statements by Asif and Bhutto have sparked widespread reactions, including in Afghanistan, especially amid heightened tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad following that deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir.
Since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has had tense relations with two of its neighbours: India and Afghanistan. Its main point of contention with India is over control of Jammu and Kashmir while the disagreement over the Durand Line has been at the root of tensions with Afghanistan. India and Pakistan have fought four wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. Even outside these conflicts, relations have frequently been marked by high tension.
Pakistan pursued three strategic actions in its confrontation with India:
- Acquire nuclear weapons: Pakistan conducted its first nuclear test in 1998, while India had already become a nuclear power in 1974
- Support jihadist groups and adopt an anti-India foreign policy: Pakistan armed, funded, and trained jihadist and terrorist groups
- Foreign policy manoeuvres: Pakistan sought to build alliances at three levels: with global powers, within the Islamic world, and across the region, aiming to rally support against India and Afghanistan
At the same time, Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan has never been friendly, even coming close to war at times. Border clashes are considered routine — even in the past four years, during which Afghanistan has been under the control of the Taliban, which have long been allies of Pakistan. While the root of the long-term tensions between the two countries lies in the Durand Line, Afghanistan’s ties with India and Pakistan’s regional hegemony-seeking behaviour have also contributed to tensions.
In July 1949, two years after Pakistan’s formation, the Afghan parliament unilaterally annulled the Durand Line agreement. Since then, successive governments in Kabul have refused to formally recognize its demarcation line as the border. For its part, Pakistan treats Afghanistan as its “younger brother” and part of its strategic sphere of influence in the region. Throughout its political history, Pakistan has tried to pressure Kabul’s governments to:
- Align its foreign policy in regard to India with Pakistan’s interests
- Drop any territorial claims related to the Durand Line
- Give Pakistan the upper hand in training Afghanistan’s military and security forces
As successive Afghan governments — from the reign of King Zahir Shah to the fall of the Islamic Republic in 2021 — did not comply with Pakistan’s demands, Pakistan supported insurgent, jihadist, and terrorist groups to exert pressure or destabilize successive governments in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s jihadis: An opportunity for Pakistan
With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the early 1980s, the Western world along with Islamic and Arab countries reacted by supporting jihadist Islamist groups who would oppose the Soviets. As the host of these jihadist groups and the main executor of the jihad project, Pakistan strategically linked its cooperation with the West to the Islamic holy war. This allowed Pakistan to more effectively pursue its strategic objectives regarding India and Afghanistan.
Even before the jihad project, Pakistan sought to place itself at the forefront of the West’s security belt by joining alliances such as SEATO (South East Asia Treaty Organization, which operated from 1954 to 1977) and the Baghdad Pact (1955-1979). But the jihad in Afghanistan created an opportunity to deepen these partnerships — and gave them a religious dimension. Within this framework, religious schools (madrasas) promoting religious extremism expanded rapidly across Pakistan. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) took control of distributing financial resources from the West and Arab countries to jihadist groups.
In 1975, around 100,000 students were enrolled in madrasas across Pakistan. By 1998, more than 540,000 students in Punjab province alone were studying in these religious schools.
In the polarized climate of the Cold War — where Afghanistan was absorbed into the Soviet bloc and India was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement — Pakistan forged strategic partnerships with the Soviet rivals of United States and China as well as India, to some extent. Simultaneously, it used funding from Arab states to promote religious extremism, seeing the jihad project as potentially useful in the Kashmir conflict as well.
With support from America’s CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, the mujahedeen eventually defeated the Soviet-installed Afghan government of Mohammad Najibullah. However, they failed to establish a stable replacement government . Amid the chaos of the mujahedeen’s internal civil wars, al-Qaeda — composed mainly of Afghan Arabs — was formed, and the Taliban emerged from mid-level commanders of jihadist groups such as Harakat-e-Inqilab.
A wide range of students from Pakistan’s religious schools joined the Taliban. With promises of security and rule of law, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and ruled for four years. Up to that point, Pakistan had achieved remarkable success against its neighbours.
The difficulty of containing a fire of one’s own making
Pakistan’s ability to continue to reap the benefits of the jihad project was not guaranteed. The September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States and the Taliban’s refusal to hand over al-Qaeda leaders to the Bush administration placed Pakistan in a difficult position of having to choose between the West or the very jihadist protégés it had nurtured. In 2001, Pakistan sided with the United States, but by 2003 it had resumed support for its jihadist partners.
The withdrawal of U.S. and NATO-led forces from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power were seen as another strategic victory for Pakistan. Yet, the increase in terrorist attacks within Pakistan, the Taliban’s refusal to suppress Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), ongoing border clashes, and the Taliban’s growing ties with India have once again placed Pakistan in a challenging position.
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, there are currently 45 active terrorist and insurgent groups operating in Pakistan — most of which emerged after the 1980s as a result of the global jihad project. The U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report estimated that terrorist attacks in Pakistan increased by more than 50 percent in 2023, compared to the previous year.
Data from the portal also shows that at least 754 members of the Pakistani security forces were killed in 2024 — the highest number in more than a decade. Moreover, the report confirms that in the first five months of 2025, the casualties among security forces in Pakistan have already exceeded the total number recorded in all of 2021.
Pakistan finds itself facing three irreparable consequences by its long-term support of terrorism:
- Its international image has become inseparably tied to terrorism, and repairing this it will require a new approach and time
- The terrorist and extremist groups nurtured within Pakistan’s own institutions have slipped beyond its control and brought the flames of violence back home.
- The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has inspired Pakistan’s most powerful terrorist group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to pursue the establishment of an Islamic Emirate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Mohammad Qasim Erfani is a former university professor in Kabul and an international relations researcher and writer.
