Pakistan's internal security crisis and renewed proxy terror threat in J&K

India's internal security challenge in Jammu and Kashmir has been inseparable from the strategic calculus of the Pakistani military establishment since the late 1980s. Pakistan's doctrine of 'bleeding India by a thousand cuts' — using non-state proxy groups to sustain low-intensity conflict in J&K without triggering a full-scale conventional war — has been a defining feature of the bilateral relationship. Groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), both designated terrorist organisations under UN Security Council Resolution 1267, have functioned as instruments of this proxy strategy, providing the Pakistani military establishment with plausible deniability while keeping Indian security forces under sustained pressure.

The strategic environment, however, has shifted considerably in recent years. The abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and the reorganisation of J&K into two Union Territories altered the political and administrative architecture of the region. Simultaneously, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan removed a key external pressure point that had historically constrained Pakistani adventurism — the need to remain a credible US partner. The rise of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as potent internal threats to Pakistan has introduced a new variable: the Pakistani military is now fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously, with its western border increasingly insecure.