There’s a better option than war to flush out terrorists from Pakistan

Call it bad luck, but the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) just could not break the officer from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) despite inflicting terrible torture on him for days. Frustrated and bitter, the ISI decided to kill him in a staged car accident.

By then, however, the officer’s mysterious disappearance had come to the notice of the Indian mission in Islamabad and the authorities in New Delhi. Both moved heaven and earth in Islamabad to trace the officer who, everyone was sure, was a victim of the ISI’s strong-arm tactics.

To cut a long story short, a chilling no-nonsense message was conveyed to Benazir that if anything were to happen to the officer, the ISI would end up losing at least one of its operatives in a very similar manner in India.

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The threat worked. Benazir got on to the telephone and ordered the ISI to immediately free the Indian officer, without any ifs and buts. The instruction came just when the ISI was planning to push a car down a hill overlooking Islamabad, with the officer inside. He got his freedom in the nick of time — and eventually returned to Delhi, although in a battered form.

Basic malaise

The point in recalling this story is that those who actually run the Pakistani state are of a particular bent of mind. Since helping the Afghan mujahideen to successfully push back the Soviet military, with generous help from the US and Saudi Arabia, Islamabad has come to firmly believe that it can do whatever it wants and get away with even brazen murder.

Also read: Why Pakistan's offer for fair probe into Pahalgam attack is just hogwash

This is the main reason why Pakistan has had the audacity to brazenly harbour, finance and provide military assistance to all kinds of terrorists against India for so long. In the case of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan was even open about providing “political and diplomatic” support to Islamists.

Aggressive Indian diplomacy and changing international fortunes have over the years forced Pakistan to blunt its approach vis-à-vis India. But the basic malaise remains.

Into the heart of Pakistan

Like in the case of the abducted RAW officer, another occasion when the Indians proved that killings need not be a one-way traffic was during the Kargil conflict. Scores of Pakistani infiltrators were caught and executed. An Indian journalist who was at the frontlines said they were shown the lifeless bodies but not allowed to take photographs. Islamabad could not even protest since it insisted that its soldiers or nationals had not entered India’s territory.

Knowing well the kind of language Islamabad understands and respects is why the Indian security establishment unleashed a well-planned and well-executed covert mission to take out, in Pakistan itself, scores of terrorist leaders wanted by New Delhi. The terrorists and their handlers were smug in their belief that they were beyond the reach of the Indian law and nothing could ever happen to them.

The ISI paid them and their families well too — for services rendered.

From about 2020 to 2024, international media reports speak of some 20 such targeted killings. Most were linked to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), both outlawed in India. Most victims were shot from close range.

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Pakistani officials were quoted as saying that a sophisticated operation was run from a Gulf country. A noted Khalistani, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, was also gunned down. A car bomb exploded near the house of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed; he survived. (Publicly, India denied its involvement in any of the acts of violence in Pakistan.)

Terror in terrorist ranks

How did the targeted killings start in Pakistan? The trigger was the 2019 killings in a car bomb explosion of some 40 CRPF troopers at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir. This act of violence was proudly claimed by the JeM. It was this mayhem that led the Indian security establishment to convince itself that the war against terrorism had to be taken to the enemy’s fortress, right into the heart of Pakistan.

The killings, once the tempo increased, created terror in the terrorist ranks and their handlers. Khalistanis based in the West who routinely visited Pakistan hurriedly called off their visits. Many JeM and LeT activists were underground in their own country!

After a while, nobody could even guess who the next target would be. This did not halt terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir but helped bring it down substantially.

So, Pulwama 2019 was a turning point. But as the Pahalgam terror attack in 2025 shows, the Pakistani leopard (read ISI) may not be growling as fiercely as earlier but has not changed its spots.

Effective option

Naturally, India’s counter must continue. While improvising the existing modus operandi, it is imperative that India does all that it can to keep taking out Pakistani terrorists and their handlers wherever they live, including in Pakistan.

Also read: Actions will 'certainly have consequences': India warns Pak on cross-border terrorism

Allegations of interfering in another country’s internal affairs will not wash since Islamabad has viciously poked its nose into Indian matters for decades, without bothering about the niceties of another sovereign state.

Outside of countries run by hardline Stalinist and Islamist parties, Pakistan is a unique basket. Real power in Pakistan is in the hands of an unelected military-intelligence set-up, which has no scruples and which should not be confused with Pakistanis in general or Pakistani society.

Targeted killings of Pakistani terrorists and handlers is a much better and more effective option than an open military confrontation.

This is not to say that at some extraordinary time, the two cannot go together. They can. But any war will have to stop at some point; the other need not.