Colombo, April 22 Pakistan's blocking of any mention of The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the UN-proscribed Pakistani terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, in a UN Security Council release following the Pahalgam attack reflected not fight against terrorism but an effort to manage it, a report said on Wednesday.
According to a report in ‘Sri Lanka News’, the April 22, 2025 Pahlagam terror attack carried out by the Pakistan-based terrorist group TRF was not an act of sudden rage but a calculated strike aimed at the idea that Jammu and Kashmir was returning to normalcy.
In 2024 alone, it said, nearly three million tourists visited the valley, with newly-wed couples, families, and holidaymakers filling the hotels across Pahalgam, Gulmarg, and Sonmarg.
“The tourism industry had been booming since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, and analysts say the ISI’s calculated intent was to unleash Lashkar-e-Taiba to hurt that very sector. The massacre was designed not only to kill people but also to kill confidence — and for a brief, brutal moment, it worked. Bookings were cancelled overnight at hotels across Pahalgam, Gulmarg, and Sonmarg, leaving owners, guides, and shopkeepers to absorb losses running into crores of rupees,” the report detailed.
“The horror of the attack itself is almost impossible to narrate without flinching. Armed with M4 carbines and AK-47s, the militants entered Baisaran Valley through surrounding forests. They singled out the men, asked them about their religion before firing, and in some cases instructed tourists to recite the Islamic declaration of faith to identify non-Muslims. Newlywed men were shot point-blank in front of their wives,” it added.
The report stressed that the attack was not insurgency but a choreographed display of religious supremacy orchestrated by handlers operating safely across the border.
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, in an interview with an international media outlet, appeared to acknowledge that Pakistan had supported terrorist groups for over three decades — describing it as carrying out the West’s “dirty work".
“That admission, offered almost casually in an interview, is among the most significant confessions in the modern history of South Asian terrorism. Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had made a similar concession years earlier, acknowledging that his government trained militant groups for deployment in Kashmir and turned a blind eye because it wanted to pressure India into negotiations. What had once been whispered is now, apparently, spoken aloud,” the report mentioned.
Highlighting the growing global footprint of Pakistan-linked terror networks, it cited India’s extradition of Tahawwur Rana in the weeks preceding the Pahalgam massacre — a former Pakistan Army officer convicted in the United States for aiding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
The report stated that the global community cannot afford “selective memory or diplomatic politeness" when dealing with Pakistan, which “openly shelters the architects of mass murder”.
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