Almost a year has passed since Operation Sindoor, and developments from across the border tell a troubling story. The Pakistani security establishment has not dismantled the terror groups behind the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025. Instead, it has allowed their leadership to step out into open space, address rallies, sit on public stages, and threaten India with fresh violence.
The crackdown that Islamabad promised the international community after the four-day military exchange in May 2025 never came. What is apparent now is the opposite. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) have rebuilt their infrastructure, resumed recruitment, and placed their top operatives in front of cameras.
Another attack on Indian soil is being prepared, and another military crisis between two nuclear-armed states has become a credible possibility. The most striking evidence comes from the LeT operational commander Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a US-designated global terrorist. In a public speech delivered in January 2026 at the rebuilt Markaz-e-Taiba complex in Muridke, Rauf admitted that the Indian airstrikes of 6-7 May 2025 had reduced the LeT headquarters to rubble.
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He went further. He told his audience that Pakistan had given LeT“open freedom for jihad”and that recruitment and training of terrorists is easier in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world. He added that the state had taken this decision, which was why the outfit was free to operate.Thisis a sanctioned terrorist describing, on record, the institutional cover his outfit enjoys from the Pakistani state.
The remark, captured on video and circulated widely, demolishes years of formal denials by Islamabad. He told his audience that Pakistan had given LeT and that recruitment and training of terrorists is easier in Pakistan than anywhere else in the world. He added that the state had taken this decision, which was why the outfit was free to operate.
is a sanctioned terrorist describing, on record, the institutional cover his outfit enjoys from the Pakistani state. Rauf’s admission is not an isolated outburst. Saifullah Khalid Kasuri, the deputy chief of LeT and the operative identified by Indian agencies as the mastermind of the Pahalgam attack, has made several public appearances of his own.
In an undated school event filmed in Kasur in Punjab and surfaced in January 2026, Kasuri told his audience that the Pakistan Army regularly invites him to lead funeral prayers for fallen soldiers and to attend military events. He declared, before a crowd of children, that India is afraid of him. The footage is chilling not only for its content but for its setting.
A man wanted by India for the murder of 26 civilians is addressing Pakistani schoolchildren under the gaze of military patrons. Kasuri has also boasted that India erred in Operation Sindoor by limiting itself to terror infrastructure rather than escalating further. The signal he is sending to his own cadre and to the wider jihadist constituency is unambiguous.
s admission is not an isolated outburst. JeM has followed the same trajectory. Masood Azhar, who hadremained out of public view since 2003, surfaced last year with a long video address from aseminaryin Bahawalpur.
He called for renewed jihad in Kashmir and threatened to liberate the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. A subsequent audio clipearlier this yearsaw him invoking suicide bombers as a tool of war against India. Azhar’s reactivation, after two decades of silence, was not a personal decision.
It reflected a policy choice by the Pakistani military leadership under Field MarshalSyedAsim Munir to deploy JeM once again as a strategic instrument against India, much as the outfit was used in the Parliament attack of 2001 and the Pulwama bombing of 2019. Masood Azhar, who had ed out of public view since 2003, surfaced last year with a long video address from a . A subsequent audio clip saw him invoking suicide bombers as a tool of war against India. It reflected a policy choice by the Pakistani military leadership under Field Marshal
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