Globally, the priority of countering terrorism has taken a back seat. International diplomatic and political pressure points built as part of the post-9/11 “war on terror” era are fraying. Most of these tools and mechanisms, operationalised via a concoction of multilateral institutions and military might, predominantly by the US, are being withdrawn as part of Washington’s recalibration over its own role as the self-anointed global police force. As part of this exercise’s outcome, the likes of the Taliban in Afghanistan and former Al Qaeda leader Ahmed Al Sharaa in Syria have garnered acceptance as a new era of para-States arises. Beyond Syria and Afghanistan, the US has even held in-person dialogue with Hamas to find middle paths and offramps in West Asia.

The above compromises being made will have a direct impact on how New Delhi develops its countering terrorism vocabulary moving forward. While management of public opinion around such events for political power is crucial, even more so in a democracy, policies for short-term gains will not resolve demands for sustainable deliverables to escalation ladders employed. Pahalgam has happened despite two such escalatory policies, surgical strikes in 2016 and Balakot air strikes in 2019.

The terror group which claimed Pahalgam, The Resistance Front (TRF), an arm of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), has been operating around the region on a smaller scale for a few years now, notably at a time when there was a favourable level of stability and peace. India’s now former Army chief, General MM Naravane, back in 2021, almost prophetically, had described TRF as the “Terror Revival Front”. Over the past years, sporadic and low-intensity terror attacks, such as those against migrant workers across Jammu & Kashmir have been attributed to various non-traditional groups including the so-called Islamic State. Many of these terror synonyms have been utilitarian, backed by the likes of LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), another Pakistan-backed group, to add a distance between their promoters, operations, and mobilise culpable deniability. The fact that Pakistan was quick to distance itself from the Pahalgam attack is a testament to this blueprint.

Like the TRF, its sister group, the People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF) has also made appearances, releasing online propaganda of training centres and even brandishing western-made weapons sourced from Afghanistan. A dated photograph of the alleged Pahalgam terrorists from a few months ago showcases weaponry that was not commonly available prior to 2021 when the US withdrew its final forces from Kabul. This included M4 and M16 rifles used by US and NATO forces. More recently, a United Nations report has claimed that half-a-million weapons left behind by US that subsequently came under Taliban control have been lost, sold, or smuggled.

Both TRF and PAFF have aimed towards a more nationalistic ideological push for their identities. This has a multi-pronged impact on how terrorism is viewed. First, the lack of using words or themes directly equating the groups to Islam, Pakistan, or any similarly associated ideology give it a shade of being more about a localised “resistance” than ideological extremism being the primary source of recruitment and operations. By way of design, this would be similar to the construct of some of the groups we see prevalent in West Asia such as Hamas or even Hezbollah and the Houthis which are clubbed together as the “Axis of Resistance”, a conglomerate backed by Iran.

Nonetheless, irrespective of such aims, recruitment largely remains ideology and theology centric. Another facet of these proxies is to install themselves in communal debates within a State’s fabric. Utilising the term anti-fascist in PAFF is one such example, where the formulation suggests a more Huntingtonian inclination on ideology, one that is built around the idea of a clash of civilisations. Interestingly, a nationalistic approach to ideology by the likes of LeT and JeM has been previously shunned by others such as ISIS, which viewed Pakistan-promoted terror groups as problematic due to them prioritising fighting over land first and Islam only later.

Moving forward, Indian counter-terror thinking needs strengthening from the ground up without care of international levers, FATF, and other multilateral security mechanisms. Intelligence as the the first line of defence needs further fortification. The security establishment could also release new maps permanently marking territories across the LoC, some kilometres inside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, as normalised areas of counter-terror special operations targeting LeT and JeM infrastructure as and when needed.

Kabir Taneja is deputy director and fellow, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation. The views expressed are personal