Syed Mehar

Mehbooba Mufti has once again shown how reflexively she reaches for political language that ends up flattering Pakistan. After the recent ceasefire around the Iran-US crisis, she welcomed the development and publicly said Pakistan’s role in securing it was “far greater than expected.” At a time when Pakistan is itself trying to project diplomatic relevance, that kind of political endorsement does not look accidental. It looks consistent with a pattern. Pakistan has in fact been reported as mediating between Washington and Tehran in the latest crisis, with Reuters and AP both noting Islamabad’s role in pushing a ceasefire framework and talks. And that is the real issue. Mehbooba Mufti never seems to miss an opportunity to frame Pakistan in a favourable light, even when caution, balance and political sobriety would have served her better. This is not the language of a leader exercising strategic restraint. It is the language of someone who appears far too eager to validate Pakistan’s relevance whenever the opportunity presents itself. The pattern is not new. In May 2025, when India and Pakistan reached a ceasefire understanding, she publicly thanked Donald Trump for intervening and also congratulated Pakistan alongside India’s leadership. On that occasion too, the instinct was revealing: instead of centring India’s security position, she moved quickly toward language that normalized praise for Pakistan. This is why her latest statement deserves scrutiny. A serious political leader from Jammu & Kashmir should understand the weight of words. Public praise for Pakistan is never politically neutral in this region. It carries symbolism. It sends signals. And it reinforces the impression that for some leaders, Pakistan must always be kept politically indulged, verbally accommodated, or emotionally reassured. That is not diplomacy. That is political conditioning. One may welcome de-escalation. One may support peace. One may even appreciate diplomacy in principle. But there is a difference between supporting peace and repeatedly finding occasions to polish Pakistan’s image. Mehbooba Mufti seems unable to recognize that difference. Or worse, she recognizes it and chooses the same line anyway. For the people of J&K, this should raise a larger question: why does she so often sound more comfortable praising Pakistan’s supposed role than holding Pakistan accountable for the instability, violence and damage its policies have inflicted on this region for decades? That is where the discomfort begins. Because when a politician repeatedly leans into narratives that elevate Pakistan, the public is entitled to ask whether this is just rhetoric or a deeper political instinct she has never truly abandoned. Peace should be welcomed. War should be avoided. But Pakistan does not need political public relations from Kashmir’s mainstream leaders. And yet, Mehbooba Mufti keeps volunteering for the role.

PoJK is no longer just a disputed territory under Pakistan’s control, it is increasingly being seen as a hub of terror infrastructure, especially for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The UN identifies LeT as a Pakistan-based terrorist organisation, and after the 2025 Pahalgam attack, India said it struck LeT/JeM-linked sites in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir during Operation Sindoor. Pakistan denied the allegations, but the pattern is what matters: terror networks do not keep resurfacing around PoJK by accident.

The case of Abu Hurera is a reminder that terrorism in Kashmir was never just about a man crossing a border with a weapon. It was about long-term embedding, social camouflage, financial channels, local shelter and ideological cover. If the details emerging from the investigation are accurate, this was a decade-long infiltration architecture, not a temporary hideout operation. A Pakistani terrorist enters J&K, quietly roots himself across Gassu, Wanihoma, Chaterhama and Danihama, uses Harwan as a logistics hub, builds trust through local embedding and turns residence, relationships and movement into parts of a covert support system. That alone should disturb every serious observer. Because this is how deep terror survives: not only through guns, but through invisibility. Through patience. Through deception. Through networks that look social on the outside and operational on the inside. The reported marriage link into a family associated with Jamaat-e-Islami makes the matter even more revealing. If this was indeed a calculated move to secure legitimacy, proximity and trust, then it shows how terror does not merely infiltrate geography, it tries to infiltrate community psychology. And that is the real danger. Terror stops being only an external threat when it learns to wear a local face. The picture becomes darker still if police findings regarding the network’s alleged involvement in sexual violence and repeated rapes are true. Because then this is not just a terror module. It is a moral sewer, a structure combining armed extremism with predatory criminality. That is one of the great lies of militancy in Kashmir: it was often sold as ideology, but on the ground it frequently degenerated into power abuse, coercion, exploitation and brutality. A gunman who violates women is not a mujahid. He is a criminal protected by fear. A terror network that sustains such men is not political. It is rotten from within. The financing trail is equally important. If funds were routed through Saudi Arabia-linked channels using Hajj and Umrah agents and then distributed locally to sustain operations, it shows once again that terrorism is not sustained only by slogans or indoctrination. It requires money pipelines, trusted intermediaries and logistical discipline. That is why counter-terror work cannot stop at encounters. The real battlefield is also in the shadow network: • the safe houses, • the couriers, • the facilitators, • the foreign money routes, the social legitimacy mechanisms. Even more alarming is the claim that links were cultivated inside Kashmir University, including use of the Naseem Bagh campus as a hideout during police operations. If true, that is not just a security breach. It is an attempt to exploit one of Kashmir’s intellectual spaces as cover for violent underground activity. And that brings us to the bigger truth Terrorism in Kashmir was never sustained by isolation alone. It survived through ecosystems. Homes became shelters. Relationships became cover. Pilgrimage routes became financial channels. Institutions became camouflage. And society was expected to treat all this as resistance. It was not resistance. It was infiltration turned inward. A decade-long network like this, if truly dismantled as reported, should be read as more than one operational success. It should be understood as the exposure of a method: embed locally, deceive deeply, finance quietly, exploit socially and survive invisibly. That is how terrorism tried to outlive public vigilance in Kashmir. And that is why no society can afford softness toward such networks. Because beneath the language of cause, there is often only a machinery of deceit, abuse, money movement and fear.

Claim: 1,059 Kashmiris were killed by Indian forces since August 5, 2019. Reality: This is not a clean fact. It is a propaganda statistic built by collapsing radically different categories into one emotional slogan. It hides the most important question, Who exactly is being counted? Because once you separate the categories, the narrative begins to fall apart. Official data placed before Parliament shows that from 2019 to 2023, J&K recorded 168 civilian deaths in terrorist-initiated incidents and encounters combined, 247 security personnel killed, and 818 terrorists killed. That alone exposes the dishonesty of sweeping slogans that try to portray the entire post-2019 fatality landscape as one story of civilians killed by Indian forces. And when the data is broken down more carefully, the distortion becomes even clearer. In a 2023 Rajya Sabha reply, civilian deaths in terrorist-initiated incidents in J&K were listed as 39 in 2019, 32 in 2020, 37 in 2021, 26 in 2022 and 10 up to July 31, 2023, a total of 144. Civilian deaths during encounters/counter-terror operations in those same periods were 5, 6, 4, 5, and 0. A total of just 20. So when propaganda accounts imply that a giant undifferentiated number reflects civilians broadly being killed by Indian forces, they are erasing the distinction between terrorist violence and counter-terror operations. Claim: The number proves a one-sided story of state violence. Reality: The conflict data does not support that simplification. SATP’s J&K fatalities table, current to April 5, 2026, records that from 2019 through 2025 there were 1,484 terror-related fatalities in J&K: 212 civilians, 285 security forces, 983 terrorists/insurgents, and 4 unspecified. In other words, the overwhelming share of those fatalities in that dataset were not civilians. They included a very large number of militants/terrorists, along with security personnel and civilians. That is the trick behind such diaspora messaging Mix civilians, terrorists and security personnel into one pool, strip away category labels, assign one political cause to the whole lot, and then market the final number as proof of a pre-written conclusion. That is not human rights accounting. That is narrative engineering. Claim: The slogan is about justice. Reality: Justice requires classification, attribution and evidence not category laundering. Every civilian death matters. Every abuse allegation deserves scrutiny. Every operation must remain open to lawful examination where required. But once a propaganda ecosystem starts blending terrorists, civilians, and security personnel into one undifferentiated political number, it is no longer documenting reality. It is manufacturing outrage. Facts matter. Categories matter. Attribution matters. And once those are removed, what remains is not truth, just a statistic weaponised for narrative effect.